TÉLÉ RÉALITÉ

In the film Télé Réalité by Lucile Desamory, Glodie Mubikay and Gustave Fundi, three Congolese producers want to make a reality TV show about carnival in Belgium. A Burundian showrunner named Hawaly is preparing the shoot, but her Belgian colleague is too busy dealing with the supernatural.

Télé Réalité was shot in Kinshasa and Belgium and uses "ethnographic surrealism" to explore pagan rituals – like carnival – that still exist in Belgium. The film evokes the supernatural and the fantastic through an elaborate mix of customs, rites, dialects and languages. Pitching novel and out-of-the-box ideas, Desamory, Fundi and Mubikay hope to create new openings in the relationship between Africa and Europe. They rely on a "carnival of shared stories" to develop a telepathic channel between the two continents: a symbolic tunnel for new ways to connect.

The film premiered at the 70th Berlinale in 2020.