
Rent-a-Foreigner in China
In cities across China, property developers hire ordinary foreigners off the street to pose as visiting celebrities, executives, and musicians, staging fake ribbon-cuttings and press events to make housing developments look more prestigious than they are. Director David Borenstein follows some of these hired white faces through a single job, showing how little preparation or credentials the work requires: a suit, a passport, and a willingness to shake hands and smile for local television cameras. The film treats the practice as a symptom of a broader anxiety in China's booming real estate market, where the appearance of foreign interest is currency in itself, regardless of whether it's genuine. Interviews with the foreigners themselves reveal how casually they treat the deception, some amused, some uneasy about what they are lending their faces to. It's a small, absurd corner of China's property boom, but the film uses it to say something sharper about status, spectacle, and who gets paid to perform authenticity.