The Other Profile: a director goes in search of his Facebook double in this self-aware investigative venture

• Reviewed from CPH:DOX Festival 2023. 

There should not be two Armel Hostious. The Breton filmmaker has not even uploaded his photo to his Facebook page – so why is his likeness, complete with film camera, on a second account, one ‘friended’ by a number of young actresses in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital? And why does Facebook insist the account is not fake?

In the wonderfully surprising, eye-opening impromptu that follows, the real Hostiou follows his curiosity to the contemporary wilds of Kinshasa’s street life and digital hustle, on a journey that evokes not only Conrad’s Heart of Darkness but also Dostoevsky’s The Double. 

Finding succour with Sarah and Peter, two welcoming artists at a local collective, Armel soon sees the doubtfulness of his mission – “Kin’ is so big,” Sarah warns, and it’s Armel who’s out of place. Advised that the local police aren’t much equipped to help him, beyond their well-used sjamboks (hippo-hide whips), Armel and his accomplices try their own investigations. But attempts to track the fake Armel through his Facebook trail meet decided silence.

In one of several droll comic sequences, a honey trap set by Sarah and her man-weary girl friends goes unsprung. Armel even seeks the counsel of a marabout, but finds himself obligated to the spirit guide for offerings of sheep’s and crows’ heads, or cash equivalent. Is he watcher or watched? Player or mark? Escaping the city, he meets a fisher who tells him to be patient, cast his net, and merge with his prey. “Look for the fake within,” counsels the sage. “Real and fake are one and the same.”

And indeed, hereafter the surprises multiply, as Armel makes a catch and finds himself on the hook, dragged across the city by the ‘other’ Armel, awed and bewildered by the unfettered world he finds. Sarah floats a reference to Diogo Cão, the original white 15th-century ‘discoverer’ of the Kongo, or – to locals – a lost explorer who was given harbour and care. 

Progressively the film (whose original title, Le vrai du faux, roughly translates as ‘The real fake’) hands its perspective and platform to unheard local voices. A dummy casting call to draw out fake Armel’s actress contacts elicits real stories of endemic sexual harassment. A breakout street rap castigates the whiteness of human rights law. Later, the other Armel’s invitation to the countryside reveals the persistence of colonial predation and connivance, where villagers give Congo’s ‘fake’ leaders the runaround with their own fake ceremonies to hide their treasures.

In the final scenes, the film sheds its skin completely, a camera takeover as an emblem of power-sharing and transfer. With a beautifully apt modesty of means, this self-aware investigative venture gently skewers our myths of uniqueness and authenticity, and embraces the modern city and media as nexus of elusion, illusion and intrepid creative expression.