<em>How to Feed a Dictator</em>

Andrew Neel’s Tribeca and Sheffield Doc/Fest-debuting How to Feed a Dictator, shot across seven countries, teases out the stories of the now elderly personal chefs to Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, and Kim Jong-il while they recreate the strongmen’s favourite dishes, the final creations framed as if in a culinary magazine. These contemporary images are then juxtaposed with archival footage, along with sit-downs with journalists, academics, and even several victims of the regimes who link food itself to extractive power (as crucial as guns, according to political science prof Bruce Beuno de Mesquita). This allows a sensational premise to ultimately become something much more satisfying, a thorny exploration of the line between banal complicity and circumstantial desperation.

Cinematic gumbo

Indeed, from the film’s opening scene, in which Pol Pot’s onetime chef Keo Samoun presents a colourful offering of the Khmer Rouge leader’s favourite foods at his burial site, we’re thrown headlong into a strange cinematic gumbo made up of the mundane mixed with the incomprehensible. (Turns out the Cambodian despot responsible for the slaughter of millions really enjoyed vegetables.) While paying respects to a genocidal revolutionary who annihilated a quarter of his country’s population might seem distasteful, we later learn that this quiet, diminutive woman actually joined the movement as a child fleeing poverty. (This makes for a stark contrast to the upbringing of her former boss, the son of wealthy farmers.) Though this fact doesn’t vindicate Samoun in the Cambodian court of public opinion, it does at least go a long way to explaining her commitment to a father figure who provided food and shelter. (We likewise later learn that the Khmer Rouge allowed ownership of two things — a spoon and a bowl.)

A voiceover by journalist Riccardo Orizio, who stresses that «food decides life and death,» provides context as swift-moving stills of Amin, Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il at lavish banquets prompt a viewer’s sense of outrage. Or perhaps pride if you’re Jorge «Coco» Pacheco. Still in charge of the seafood restaurant that he ran when Pinochet first came in as a customer in the 80s, Pacheco’s a lifelong anticommunist who was forced to turn to the black market as Chilean society fractured in the 60s. The loquacious foodie waxes rhapsodic about the military dictator, sharing photos of himself and his boss at decadent events, which are then jarringly set against images of the regime’s graphic violence. Later, we even hear from a survivor who describes being tortured with food while imprisoned, forced to eat boiling soup with rotten meat in the span of five minutes.

But Pacheco is adamant that Pinochet restored law and order. Not to mention, he appreciated his culinary expertise, right down to requesting that Pacheco serve him his signature fish dish behind bars after he was finally extradited back to Chile. Soldiers were killed on both sides, the unrepentant chef insists, and every war has its winners and losers. Cut to go-to fascism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who sighs, «I don’t have any patience for this bullshit.» (Ben-Ghiat likewise later notes that authoritarians don’t just require that you betray others, but that «you betray yourself.» They’ll also «rearrange society» in order to stay in power as long as possible.)

Dear leader’s pepperoni pizza

Though not quite boastful, Ermanno Ferlanis, who was recruited by members of Kim Jong-il’s regime for his pizza-making skills, seems just as culpable, despite the fact that he’s now in constant fear for his life. He admits he was initially wary of agreeing to an interview, worried the filmmakers might actually be government agents. Like all the food maestros in the doc, Ferlanis swears he never witnessed people starving. However, unlike the others, trapped inside privileged bubbles within their homelands, the Italian freely chose not to see the reality beyond his first-class accommodations and beachside vacations. It appears he may have been too busy making the dear leader’s favourite pepperoni pizza and living la dolce vita with his family to pay much heed to international media reports of the horrific North Korean famine unfolding in the 90s.

Another chef is so afraid for his life that he uses the alias «Abu Saif» and only appears onscreen in silhouette, certain that his former boss Saddam Hussein’s enemies are out to get him. (Though he’s equally sure that those in Saddam’s camp would never do him any harm.) Which is too bad since Saif planned to be an actor before finding employment at the authoritarian’s summer homes, where he was advised to learn to grill if he wanted to get close to the despot.

authoritarians don’t just require that you betray others, but that «you betray yourself.»

As for Otonde Odera, it seems he’s got little left to lose. Once the personal chef to Idi Amin — who himself began as a cook in the British colonial army — Odera got the job after working on a white-owned farm where he «memorised» the kitchen’s cooking methods. (The fact that the Ugandan strongman had a hankering for the food of his oppressors is yet another tasty morsel for armchair psychologists.) Though the now frail and elderly man spent much of his life protected by power, he clearly views himself as a victim, not an accomplice, of the ruthless ruler’s regime. A cook’s job is to cook, he emphasises. «There is no other story.»

Once imprisoned and nearly executed for serving a dish that gave some of the Amin kids an upset stomach, Odera now spends his remaining years impoverished, subsisting on vegetables from his garden. This is clearly not a situation relatable to Amin’s daughter, who reminisces about her charmed upbringing while admiring the beauty of the compound her father bequeathed to her. (Orizio later points out that dictators are extremely cruel and extremely generous.) As for talk of atrocities, she has little patience. «Ugandans are just hungry,» she states dismissively. They just want to «get something to eat!» Whether she was one of the children sickened by Odera’s cooking is never broached.

Unmaking the dictator

Scenes involving the readying of animals, including a goat and several fish, for sacrifice to the meal plate are likewise difficult to stomach, mirroring the ruthless brutality of strongmen and also of the human race that birthed them. But as the translator for Pol Pot’s chef reveals from off camera that as a kid he was tortured and forced to work in the fields by the regime, the tone suddenly shifts. Samoun seems startled and yet wide open to listening, curious to hear how two youngsters from similar circumstances could find themselves on such divergent paths.

Fortunately, as How to Feed a Dictator comes to a close, brutal statistics overlay those mouth-watering images of favourite feasts, leaving us with an important reminder from Orizio. The author of Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators, in which he interviewed Amin, is convinced that people make a dictator and also «unmake a dictator.» After all, as the antifascist grandson of one of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, he’s living proof.