Hollywood is this week reeling over the sad news of film director Tony Scott’s death. The 68-year-old brother and business partner of director Sir Ridley Scott threw himself of the Vincent Thomas Bridge spanning the Los Angeles Harbour in San Pedro on Tuesday in an apparent suicide.

Writer and director Pawel Pawlikowski’s adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s novel The Woman in the Fift(Saturday 18^th August, 8.30pm) is an intense, moody and mysterious psycho-thriller about a writer’s descent into madness.

The Ambassador is the highly entertaining new documentary from Danish filmmaker and satirist Mads Brugger. In 2007, Brugger discovered an online website that offered diplomatic posts in third world countries – for a price.  

In The Ambassador, Brugger creates an alter ego named Mads Cortzen, an eccentric wealthy Danish businessman with aspirations to make a difference in Africa by setting up a match making factory. He applies to become the Liberian Consul in the Central African Republic, and head to Africa to fulfill his dream.

Of course his real intentions are quite different. Smuggling blood diamonds and hanging out with pygmies are also on his To Do list.

The result is, well quite frankly, unbelievable. Dressed as a dapper clichéd colonial adventurer, Brugger discovers a country forgotten by the rest of the world where corruption is rife, life is hellish and anything can happen. And it does.

Brugger is visiting New Zealand as part of the NZIFF, and I had the pleasure of chatting to him about the making of his documentary.