Documentary magazine is pleased to debut the exclusive trailer for This Is Not a French Film, the debut feature by Tom Adjibi. The film chronicles Adjibi’s frustrations as a Belgian-Beninese actor, whose previous credits include a role in the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night. Adjibi notices that his acting and theater roles hinge on stereotypes based on his racialized looks, and decides to hire a film crew to document his decision to cast his own film with non-white actors. It premieres later today in the NEXT:WAVE competition, for documentaries pushing the form, at CPH:DOX.

Billed as a comedic documentary, the trailer showcases the film’s diaristic beginnings and satiric approach, with Adjibi’s collaborators questioning the limits of his film-within-a-film project. This Is Not a French Film’s approach slips between documentary and reenactments. In the press materials, Adjibi explains that the reenactments ask participants to replay previous roles or to “revisit real discussions we’d already had, based on a framework” he wrote.

“It is a film that expresses a sense of urgency, and where part of the comedy comes through the language. I’m even more delighted that it can travel internationally and resonate with non-french speakers as well. I’m fully aware that the film’s subject concerns all societies where racism persists, so I’m very curious to see how the film will be received in Copenhagen,” Adjibi explains. 

Pic is produced by Joël Curtz and Walid Bekhti for CVB (Belgium) and coproduced by Clothilde Bunod for La Société du Sensible (France).