General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait

In both documentaries, General Idi Amin Dada and The Act of Killing, the authors spent a considerable amount of time with the perpetrators of mass murder. In The Act of Killing Joshua Oppenheimer gets access to the executioners, gangsters and paramilitary leaders who carried out millions of mass killings. In General Idi Amin, Barbet Schroeder spent time with one of the greatest mass murderers and the third Ugandan President Idi Amin Dada. Schroeder was able to document his firsthand account of events. Both documentaries demonstrate the kind of extraordinary access the authors were given and their ability to document the unspeakably painful truth. In both documentaries the perpetrators seem to have the impression that they are in control of…