White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

This film tells a story forgotten by white history. In the late 19th century, King Leopold of Belgium laid claim to the Congo and established a genocidal regime of industrial exploitation rarely matched in human history. For decades the Congo was plundered for rubber minerals and ivory and natives were routinely enslaved, massacred and mutilated.
Making a case like a trial of King Leopold for crimes against humanity, the film rescues from obscurity a history that continues to affect events today. The most poignant symbol of this is an African historian's visit to a shop in Brussels, where he buys little chocolate hands, a tradition rooted in the policy of soldiers cutting off the hands of native they shot to account for every bullet fired.