The Festival

After a break and countless inquiries, it's finally here: the fifth edition of «It's The Real Thing – Basel Documentary Platform,» the festival of documentary and propaganda arts.

Once again, we are dealing with the question of how we represent and fabricate reality in different spheres. One thing is clear: since the last edition in 2019, our sense of reality has undergone a spectacular transformation. At the first edition in 2013, the topic was of special interest to nerds. Today, it is a mass phenomenon. Digital reality has overtaken physical reality as the primary frame of reference. “Reality” has become the ultimate bargaining chip, appearing in all areas of everyday life. As a mystery, as a danger, as a business model, as a provocation.

Tempers are running high, nothing can be taken for granted.
But don't panic, there's theater.

Many topics were up for discussion: Fiction & Distruction, Disruption we love you, Antigone and the chainsaw, or The Metamorphosis. We chose the latter. We rub our eyes and look at a transformed world. We accept the challenge. Take that, reality!

All of the invited works have a passionate connection to reality. But they do not remain stuck in it; instead, they transcend it with powerful artistic statements, outstanding craftsmanship, and conceptual and aesthetic boldness. They respond to the present with art that continues to embrace the political. But they do not make themselves dependent on it; instead, they confront us with something lively and ambivalent. May it be daring, pathetic, sometimes with wicked humor, and in any case unpredictable.

Once again, «It's The Real Thing – Basel Documentary Platform» is a declaration of love for theater. Or in the words of the immortal Toni Morrison: «How dull, how subhuman, how unliveable life becomes when the dimension of art is taken away from it.»


Boris Nikitin & Alexa Tepen
Directors of It's The Real Thing