Absurdist satire is not what comes to mind when people think of documentaries about poverty in Africa, but filmmaker Renzo Martens’ approach is more Andy Kaufman than Nicholas Kristof. Traveling the Congo and observing the ways Western interests profit from misery and degradation in the region— selling photographs of malnourished children, paying plantation workers so little they cannot feed their families, flying in to dig for gold that will be taken and sold elsewhere—Martens decides that poverty is a natural resource that Africans need to learn to exploit. He sets up a makeshift school to teach wedding photographers to take pictures of war and raped women rather than celebrations, because they can earn 50 times as much by photographing misery. When this plan fails after an official tells the men their photographs are not good enough to earn them press credentials, Martens tells the men they should resign themselves to their poverty, since it will never change. It makes for uncomfortable viewing. No one is spared—even charity organizations like UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders are shown to be callous and exploitative in some ways—and most disturbing is Martens’ own interaction with the villagers, as he refuses to let them in on the joke. It is a kind of cruelty, another humiliation for the villagers. In making himself a villain of sorts, Martens has abdicated the filmmaker’s privileged position and produced a film that allows no one, not even the viewer, to escape awareness of their own complicity.