This is not a documentary.

The mockumentary plays, within its very semantics, with a range of meanings worth revisiting in order to navigate the subversion of this sub-genre which, earlier than one might imagine, began to question the authority inherent in documentary. The word “mock” can mean both to ridicule and to simulate or imitate.

This cinematic form constructs itself as a fictional universe operating under the logic of documentary. It is fiction appropriating the tools of documentary — from cinéma vérité to reportage, interviews, narration, making-of material, archival images or reality shows — in order to blur the unstable boundary between representation and reality, opening up a fertile territory of mutual appropriation and reflection.

With a notable presence since the beginning of the last century, even though the term mockumentary only emerged later, in the 1960s, reaching the height of its popularity in the 1980s, this retrospective programme traces a chronological line from those early moments to the present day, highlighting the genre’s fluidity and its enduring contemporary relevance.