Thompson Films

Universal Citizen is a multifaceted personal travelogue that brings us to a real Universal Hotel, in Guatemala, and to the same public square in Siena that appears at the beginning of Universal Hotel; at the center of the film are Thompson's off screen meetings with a Libyan Jew and former Dachau inmate who works as a smuggler in Guatemala and refuses to be photographed. (Jonathan Rosenbaum)

Universal Hotel combines objective and subjective elements. In it, Thompson chronicles his research into experiments by Dr. Sigmund Rascher at Dachau in 1942, in which he nearly froze a Polish prisoner and then got a German prostitute to warm him up; Thompson uses photographs from archives in six countries and recounts a subjective dream set in what he calls the Universal Hotel.