Swiss gross sales agent Lightdox has acquired worldwide rights for “The Different Profile” by French director Armel Hostiou (“Day,” “Cussed,” “The Invisible Pyramid”), which is nominated for the Copenhagen Worldwide Documentary Movie Pageant’s prime Dox:Award.
The movie’s place to begin is when he discovers the existence of a Fb doppelganger whose buddies are principally girls primarily based in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This different Fb profile organizes auditions for an upcoming movie to be shot within the DRC.
After notifying Fb about what clearly appears to be identification theft, Hostiou receives a solution informing him that it isn’t a pretend profile and can’t be shut down, resulting in what he describes as a “Kafkaesque” scenario.
“After I received this reply, which implicitly urged that I could be the pretend because the different one wasn’t, it felt absurd, like the start of a fantasy movie,” Hostiou tells Selection.
This marks the start of a surreal journey to Kinshasa to attempt to discover his doppelganger.
Alongside the best way, Hostiou makes new buddies on the artists’ residency the place he’s staying in Kinshasa, who determine to assist him in his investigation. It takes on an more and more sudden flip as he discovers a rustic and a tradition unknown to him.
“The movie begins as an investigation into what seems to be identification theft however then takes on a extra metaphysical dimension on the theme of the double – and it was attention-grabbing to see how this movie takes us down a mysterious path, which we had not anticipated.”
Hostiou explains how he found a rustic full of the promise of numerous tales to inform.
“Because of this rip-off, I used to be in a position to uncover Congo and meet these individuals, who grew to become my buddies,” he explains, including with a smile: “I like the truth that, ultimately, a bit like within the Dostoevsky novel “The Double,” my very own double takes my place and begins to make his personal movie contained in the movie.”
Requested about his personal relation to social media, the filmmaker calls it “a entice our era has fallen into”: “Like guinea pigs, we’ve all dived into it.
“The massive entice is that persons are working without spending a dime: everybody turns into their very own entrepreneur, everybody has their very own little model that they promote. And they’re creating content material for different individuals to earn cash from off – it’s very perverse and it says lots concerning the excesses of capitalism.”
“The Different Profile” is Hostiou’s second feature-length documentary and picked up the Work in Progress Award eventually 12 months’s Visions du Reel documentary movie pageant in Nyon. It’s produced by Jasmina Sijercic for Bocalupo Movies with assist from France’s CNC.
Lightdox co-founder Bojana Marić mentioned of the acquisition: “Armel Hostiou pushes the boundaries of the documentary style in a singular approach, mixing the codes of a thriller, investigation, tragedy, and irresistible comedy. However above all, the filmmaker touches upon some vital present points akin to identification, the impression of social media on our lives, and post-colonialism.”
“The Different Profile” has its world premiere in Copenhagen on March 21 and might be out in French theaters on June 7.
CPH:DOX runs from March 15 by 26.
