Drib

Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli uses his close friend Amir's bizarre story - how he almost became the international face of a well-known energy drink - as the basis for this fiction/documentary hybrid. Amir is an idiosyncratic comedian and prankster who created a momentary news sensation in 2014 by provoking random people to fight on the streets of Oslo. Videos of him seemingly getting brutally beaten up was seen by millions, and ended up inspiring a shock-value marketing scheme for a well known energy drink. A major advertising agency invited him to Los Angeles to be the face of their new campaign, but nothing turned out as expected. DRIB simultaneously exposes and revels in media manipulation as it recounts the remarkable and painfully comic advertising process that took place in 2014, with Amir appearing in the role of himself. The film tracks how art becomes commerce, how something fake can have real effects, and reveals inside information about an industry and the company that almost stopped the film from ever being made. To avoid legal issues, the real energy drink brand has been replaced with a fictitious one: DRIB.