Renzo Martens proposes to a group of Congolese photographers that they should take pictures of war corpses, raped women, and malnourished children—just as Western journalists do. Martens’s provocative position is that poverty is Africa’s most important export product, and the poor should learn how to profit from it. ENJOY POVERTY PLEASE, reads the bright neon sign Martens shamelessly brings in to the remotest villages; it also serves as the title of the ninety-minute video he shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Spotlighted as the opening film of the twenty-first International Documentary