"This is both Episode 3's great triumph and tragedy: its ability to reflect the fact that there is no more outside".

"We could condemn Martens, (...), as one gambit after another leads him on parallel paths towards a succesful artpiece and a moral precipe."

"In the Interview with [J.J.] Charlesworth, Martens was keen to stress that the film is an artwork, not a documentary, and therefore the gallery was the correct context for the screening. One of its multiple functions is a critique of what he has termed - with a nod to Adorno - the 'poverty industry' and of the auteur documentary construct, but the essential aim was to probe the edges of what it means for art to be 'critical' or 'engaged', or if such art is possible at all, a question at the forefront of contemporary critical discourse."

"Evoking the historic and ongoing colonialist exploitation of the continent's natural resources, a critical Martens dubs the indirect exchange documented by his film — images of humanitarian crisis in return for foreign aid — "the poverty alleviation industry."

"Susan Sontag argued in her book, 'Regarding the Pain of Others' that it is impossible to visualize suffering. With that in mind, watch Renzo Martens' incisive film, 'Episode III - Enjoy Poverty' a meditation on the role of the documentary filmmaker and photographer [...] Martens, when confronted with total desperation, can only turn the camera on himself."

"In his feature length 'Episode III' [...] his character remains intermittently cringe-making, but his extreme actions skirt justifiability: lecturing locals assertively on ideas of 'poverty as commodity,' he encourages them to sell their own photographs of starvation and death, not let Western photojournalists profit from their humanitarian disaster."

"Episode III… exploits art audiences"