This Is Not a Didactic Documentary: Review of THIS IS NOT A FRENCH FILM

Marking his directorial debut, Tom Adjibi’s feature docufiction This Is Not a French Film tells the story of (mis)adventures of a well-meaning actor who goes on a one-man crusade against typecasting. What starts as a solitary pursuit soon turns into a communal attempt in order to find the “right” way to fight. Blurring the line between reality and fiction, Adjibi’s film plays with matters of representation in a witty and comedic way. This Is Not a French Film got a special mention in CPH:DOX’s NEXT:WAVE section and recently had its Austrian premiere in the Competition Documentary category of Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz. 
 
Tom is a Beninese-Belgian actor. He has realized that he is always cast in roles based on racial stereotypes, which leads him to start a video diary. There is no clear goal in the beginning, he just wants the camera to film him all the time. With his cameraman and sound recordist, he goes to the screening and Q&A of an undisclosed film about non-white experiences, made by a white Belgian director.  As some of the attendees chime in with challenging questions for the filmmaker, Tom invites them to talk about their experiences, which turns into a segment consisting of talking head interviews. The interviewees point out his own hypocritical belief system. This inspires Tom to try and make a film with all of them, a collective work that would constitute an ‘ideal’ film, entitled 13 en colère, a word play meaning both “Thirteen angry people” and “Very angry people”. However, chaos ensues as everybody has a different opinion on what ‘ideal’ looks like. One of the actors proposes they do a heist film, another suggests a simpler plot based on friendship and Tom just wants the final product to include horses. 
 
The first thing that jumps out is how raw Adjibi's film is. Showing the rough edges of the process is one of its key points, as we see how precarious and nerve-wrecking filmmaking often is. When he gets called out about his aimless pursuits, instead of dropping them, it inspires him to take a new direction. Though Adjibi is the director and the main actor, the communal effort of the film is really felt. We witness him growing as an artist, as an interviewer, and as a person. 
 
The key focus of the film is on the experiences of racialised artists but there’s no clear consensus among them on how to change the status quo. The result is a jarring symphony of voices, which are trying to cooperate but realising there’s no simple fix. This is not to say that the film takes the easy path by avoiding real answers. It simply wants the audience to engage with the topics as well, rather than wagging its finger at you with the “ideal solution”. 
 
However, it’s not clear how much of this rawness is the result of staging or actual, spontaneous events. The audience can sense that Tom the actor is a character created by Adjibi the director, who has highlighted some parts of his real personality to drive certain points home. But it’s never fully revealed what is staged or reenacted. As the film is questioning genuine representations of racialised groups, Adjibi plays with how reality itself can be represented in a documentary. In the end, you’re left questioning the narrative, just like the group of actors in the film, who are questioning the dominant narratives about their histories in the West.