The Making of a New Empire

Too few film-makers have reported back from the nightmare conflict in Chechnya. Thus Jos de Putter's committed dispatches are doubly welcome. His wonderful documentary Dans, Grozny, Dans demonstrated the healing power of traditional dance for traumatised children, but here he visits the darker side with a non-partisan study of a Chechen 'Godfather', the besuited warrior/manager Khoz-Ahmed Noukhaev. Sometimes confusingly following him on a busy schedule that veers from pressing flesh in villages to London power lunches, the film portrays a complex, gently arrogant man who has built spectacularly on his Moscow gangland origins to fashion an international media/Mafia operation with designs on the Chechen state itself. Self-created and self-mythologising, he embodies the spirit of his people, which goes some way to explaining his remarkable profile.