The Real Thing
Benoit Felici, 2018Nowadays, people can discover and live in an exact copy of an Austrian village in China, visit the Forbidden City in Sydney, or get married in an "XXL" version of the Taj Mahal in Dubai. The film investigates these and other replicas of the world's most famous monuments in order to understand why they were built and how they are inhabited, and to try to get a glimpse of their future, when these copies of ruins will have become actual ruins themselves. The film starts by going to meet the people who "invented" these places, and those who bring them to life: investors, architects, builders, actors, guides and inhabitants. Between lucrative investments, modern tourism and reinterpretations of architectural constructions, each of these constructions expresses an aspect of how our world is being redrawn and transformed through globalization. "The Real Thing" will explore the political, social, cultural and economic reasons for the recent surge in "counterfeit" buildings around the world.