Congo was colonized by Belgium under the regime of Leopold II. Disguising itself as a “civilizing” mission, he convinced European powers to recognize his claim of the Congo as his private property. He never once touched Congo. As if it is his own, he named it the “Congo Free State.” Although, there was no freedom for the Congolese. Surprise, surprise, his colonial endeavours turn out to be a massive empire with the sole purpose of extracting profitable resources from the Congo. As the world finally realizes what the Belgian king has done, global outrage was expressed against his brutalities. The “Congo Free State,” then, is no more. It is renamed the Belgian Congo—although this new name only serves as a moral disguise towards the backlash. Forced labour continued, segregation deepened, and economic exploitation persisted.
It is unfortunate that history is written through the lens of these colonizers. With the attempts of rewriting the skewed past, The Tree of Authenticity (Sammy Baloji, 2025) resurrects a figure of black excellence by bringing his personal accounts found in his journals. One such figure is Paul Panda Farnana. He was a pioneering Congolese intellectual and botanist; one whom Belgium needed to further expand and optimize their pursuit of profits. He was recruited by Belgium to be its nation’s civil servant despite his skin colour. Even with his brilliance, Farnana was treated as an “exceptional native” and never as an equal to these Belgians. Through the reimagining of his lived experience, we are told in detail of his raw, first-hand accounts of exclusion, racism, and his struggle to become recognized in the scientific circles which marginalized him.
As the discriminations frustrate him, he founded Union Congolaise to represent the Congolese interest: to be heard, educated, treated equally, and recognized. His efforts, then, planted the seed for political organization among the Congolese—for he was among the first people to advocate for it. Furthermore, he participated in the Pan-African Congresses—serving as a secretary in the second one.
Amidst his political activism, Fernana and his race were undermined: “[…] Congo’s natives have barely emerged from animality [so] don’t force the hand of the delicate clock we call Evolution, because you’ll break it.” Even to this day, these “essentialisms” based on false (and long believed) truths, like phantasms, still prevail to further discriminate against races, ethnicities, genders, everything—everything that disrupts the foundations of the status quo.
As Fernana returns to his home village of Nzembe in the Congos, he dies of mysterious circumstances. Some say sickness, some say shot, some say poisoned. I say, whatever the cause was, his death turned into a convenience for colonized history. As colonialism tries to erase everything from the marginalized, every single struggle connects, intersects. The decolonial struggle is an ecological struggle is a racial struggle is a class struggle is a feminist struggle is a queer struggle is a struggle for inclusivity is a struggle for education disparity is a… In its endlessness, every single struggle connects, intersects. (Timmie) (Ed. Vanis)
Film Details
The Tree of Authenticity (L’Arbre de L’Authenticité)
Sammy Baloji | 89 min | 2025 | Belgium, Congo
In Competition for International Feature-Length Documentary
Festival Film Dokumenter 2025
