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If this film was just outrageously poor would be fine, the problem is many take it seriously. To make it short, a few points:
- There is no story, no focus, no lead whatsoever and all the questions raised fail to find an answer. Overall, the film is extremely repetitive and boring (I have been in war-torn African countries several times and found all the lingering on local misery and hopelessness very painful to watch but still having no sense).
- Questions raised are pure manipulation and the truth is that they are no questions but statements.
- I am no doc filmmaker, but what's the point in raising, for example, the question of weapon smuggling, if the only element brought to the audience is a local reporter's statement? The director doesn't even bother showing us at least a sequence where he would be waiting near the airport trying to spot heavily loaded trucks leaving the area right after a plane landed.
- The story of the fish takes up less than 5 mn, and is only supported by a sequence where the director films a documentary shown during a local conference. Did this guy do any work at all????
- Abject poverty is shown all the time in endless sequences but where's the point? One can go almost anywhere in Africa with a hand cam and shoot the same images unfortunately. Where's the big news?
- Filming the prostitutes watching and crying over images of their assassinated friend and fellow prostitute is worth the worst emotional manipulations one can see these days on thrash and real TV.
- The parallel drawn between the famine devastating the country with over two million starving and the exportation of fish is absolutely pointless, dishonest and makes no sense but to manipulate viewers in typically anti-globalization and anti-western feelings.
There is an interesting debate in France after an academic published a very detailed comment on the film, which brought number of journalists working in Africa for decades to investigate a bit further about several details. It turns out that:
- The fish waste shown drying in the sun and collected by some local people is not at all meant to be eaten by human beings but is collected to be exported for reasonably good money for animal-feeding purposes. I think I am not the only one having had the impression that the director suggested the exact opposite.
- Arm smuggling is a reality (but there again, where's the big news??), but not the way this film explains the issue. If the empty planes landing in Mwanza do participate in smuggling, they actually unload their shipment in a different location in Africa, then go to Mwanza to pick up fish in order not to make the trip back empty (meaning that they do actually land empty in Mwanza...).
- People do eat fish locally, contrary to what the film suggest (around 40-60% of what is taken out of the lake) and thousands of people make their living with it. Good for them! It's private business of that kind that will one day take African countries out of poverty and not western moaning and endless foreign assistance.
I cannot tell how shocked I am seeing the success of this film!


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