DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY/PHOTOGRAPHY: Renaud Barret
PRODUCERS: Renaud Barret, Thierry Commissionat, François de Carsalade du Pont, Benoît Tschieret, Guillaume Vincent
PRODUCTION CO: Les Films en Vrac, Belle Kinoise
EDITOR: Jules Lahana
MUSIC: Kokoko
WITH: Béni Baras, Géraldine Tobe, Freddy Tsimba

FESTIVALS: Berlin

REVIEWS

“A lively, cogent, unsettling documentary about the incredible art world roiling in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo… Renaud Barret, situates his film in the here and now that presents itself to his camera – the movie doesn’t delve into the root causes of the poverty and oppression that make the country a pressure cooker. Instead, he follows the artists who have no choice but to live in it. ‘Our work feeds on chaos,’ says Freddy Tsimba, a sculptor who assembles his work out of bottle caps, trash, machetes, and pretty much everything and anything he can amass in large quantities.

No lofts or studios for the multidisciplinary creators depicted here. They make their works in spaces that are at least semi-exposed. In some cases, as in that of Kongo Astronaut, a performance artist who walks Kinshasa’s streets in a makeshift spacesuit, they are the work… Barret makes the viewer understand, implicitly at least, the desperation of these creators, even as views of their work, and the simmering electronic Afro-funk of the soundtrack, make a case for the indomitability of their creative impulse.”

​— Glenn Kenny, NY Times

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Queenstown 
Tuesday, 08 August, 8.15pm

Nelson  
Tuesday, 15 August, 6.00pm 

​Canterbury
Monday, 28 August, 7.00pm

Dunedin     
Wednesday, 06 September, 7.30pm

Wellington  
Monday, 18 September, 6.15pm

​Auckland  
Monday, 25 September, 6.15pm

​Whanganui  
Monday, 02 October, 7.00pm​

Tauranga     
Tuesday, 10 October, 6.00pm

​Palmerston North
​Wednesday, 25 October, 6.00pm

Find more FRENCH CINEMA  >> 
French Connections is presented in
​co-operation with the Institut Français and the Embassy of France