Dramatizations based on historical truths often must gloss over certain facts. It can be impossible, over the course of two hours, to fully explore the historical realities of a moment in time. Events within our world tend to be far, far too complicated to be able to show all the facets and antecedents of events within the scope of a dramatic narrative.

This statement is not meant to excuse such representations. When a film starts off by stating that it is “based on a true story” a responsibility is placed on the audience’s shoulders to accept this statement and understand the corollary: not everything that appears in this film is necessarily true. There is also still a responsibility on the part of the filmmaker to make everything conform as much to reality as possible, to alter the truth only when necessary.

Documentaries on the other hand face an entirely different set of issues. Traditional documentaries, as pieces of non-fiction, are tasked with fully and completely exploring an issue in all of its facets. They, unquestionably, make arguments and things are colored to promote one point of view or another, but everything within them ought to be true, and omission is a sin.

So, when a documentary like The Empire in Africa comes along, a documentary that consciously sets itself up to be the truth that Blood Diamond, a “based on a true story” drama, couldn’t tell, the claim of accuracy of representation is further enhanced. The Empire in Africa is very consciously putting itself forward as delivering the truth of what has happened in Sierra Leone over the course of the past 20 years.

Not having loved Blood Diamond, thinking that it skimmed the surface of history a little too frequently, I was quite curious to see what The Empire in Africa had to say about Sierra Leone’s recent history. I was hugely disappointed with what I found.

At times, The Empire in Africa is a hard movie to watch; there are violent images, a man is shot at the opening of the documentary, and many of the things that have happened to people in Sierra Leone are hard to listen to. The story of the last few decades in the country is one of gross fiscal and governmental mismanagement, war, strife, starvation, and the tearing apart of families. However, this is not what disappointed me.

I speak a little bit of French, not much, but enough to know when the member of the French consulate that appears in the film is incorrectly, or (if I’m being nice) incompletely, translated, repeatedly. Whether his many utterings of “Je pense” (“I think”) may have been removed simply to streamline the subtitles, they alter the meaning of what is said. And, if I was able to quickly discern that these words were being left out, one wonders what else was translated incorrectly or completely left out.