Echoes from a Somber Empire

One of director Werner Herzog’s most unsettling explorations of the madness that can seize men’s hearts, this haunting documentary recounts the reign of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who ruled for eleven years as the self-declared emperor of the Central African Republic, presiding over a regime of shocking corruption. Told through the eyes of everyone from Bokassa’s wives to his political enemies to a foreign journalist he brutally imprisoned, ECHOES FROM A SOMBER EMPIRE is in some ways one of the director’s more straightforward documentaries—though in true Herzog fashion he makes room for everything from the swarming migration of the Christmas Island red crab to the unforgettable sight of a smoking chimpanzee.