How To Feed A Dictator
Director Andrew Neel uses Witold Szablowski‘s book as the basis of his Tribeca 2026 doc How To Feed A Dictator. Call it food porn meets a global authoritarian playbook. This is a brilliant film, if you can stomach it.
Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, and Kim Jong-il chefs share how they came to work for five of the world’s most infamous dictators. They discuss favorite recipes and stories from their time together. In sit-down interviews, the chefs either feign total ignorance or lie straight to the camera. Most of them are complete sycophants, all these years later. It is undeniably chilling.
To counter the smugness of the chefs, Neel features survivors recalling the sick realities left in the wake of destruction and starvation of the people. While Neel explores the similarities between these men’s mentalities, nothing is particularly shocking to anyone who respects history. Toxic patriarchal fear-mongering from scared little boys.
Brad Turner‘s editing is a marvel. Heinous history is intercut with step-by-step recipes and the sad backstories of each chef. Exquisite, slow-motion overhead shots of food mix with the gore of death. Shocking archival footage serves as an unwanted main course.
How To Feed A Dictator is aptly titled as a double entendre. It is so easy to see the horrendous parallels in current global politics. Audiences who are clued into reality will sit wide-eyed as they make connections between timelines and the nation’s blood on our hands. You choose from a menu of authoritarian behaviors and apply them to America. How To Feed A Dictator will turn your stomach.
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