Afrikamera 2026 – L’arbre de l’authenticité

Sammy Baloji
Belgien / DR Kongo 2025, OmE, 89 min

[Tickets]

DI 10 NOV
20:00 FSK KINO

Amid one of the lar­gest rain­fo­rests on the African con­ti­nent lie the ruins of what was once one of the world’s lar­gest tro­pi­cal agri­cul­tu­ral rese­arch cen­ters – the INERA Yangambi Research Station, loca­ted on the banks of the Congo River.

THE TREE OF AUTHENTICITY, a three-part docu­men­ta­ry film essay by Congolese pho­to­grapher and video artist Sammy Baloji, uses poe­tic texts to explo­re the con­se­quen­ces of eco­lo­gi­cal des­truc­tion that began during Belgian colo­ni­al rule. The film draws on the voices of two pio­nee­ring sci­en­tists who work­ed bet­ween the 1910s and 1950s: Paul Panda Farnana and Abiron Beirnaert.