News

Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu plays a mother scratching a living in the Congolese capital in Alain Gomis’s dramatic, compassionate study

Franco-Senegalese film-maker Alain Gomis has created a film portrait in an ambient social-realist style, showing us a woman called Félicité: a bar singer in the tough streets of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Gomis leaves it up to us to determine the precise level of irony in her name.

Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu is a formidable presence as Félicité, a single mum of a tearaway teen boy Samo (Gaetan Claudia), for whom she must stay strong. She is scratching a living with her music, evidently bruised and humbled by the reverses of her life, drifting into a relationship with Tabu (Papi Mpaka), the boozy, unreliable guy who once came to repair her fridge.

Continue reading...

By Jose Solís

The title heroine of Félicité is unlike any film character you’ve met. As played by Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu, she’s both larger than life and an everywoman trying to make a living as a singer in a Kinshasan bar. When her son Samo (Gaetan Claudia) has a devastating motorcycle accident, Félicité is forced to go in a race against time, as she tries to find the money to pay for his treatment. But this is only the first of Félicité’s many plights and before we know it, the film has become a soulful character study in which a woman must learn to accept love from others. If the film sounds like a social drama, it’s only because director Alain Gomis uses that familiar structure to invite us into a world that will seem new to many, but once inside he defies the conventions...

A wild and adventurous fourth feature from French-African director Alain Gomis, Félicité find ourselves in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the world’s most dangerous places and a hard place in the best of times to make a living. Gomis, alongside cinematographer Céline Bozon, photograph the city as a wild, confused metropolis, unspooling over new-money concrete blocks, dirt tracks and a make-shift hazardous slums. It’s where Félicité, played with style and jazz by Congolese theatre actor Vero Tshanda Beya, works hand-to-mouth as a singer in raucous night clubs. The opening scene shows Félicité in full voice in a dive bar, where men drunkenly brawl and wads of notes are sent her way in reckless abandon, shot with an explosive energy.

Félicité’s livelihood is stopped in its tracks when her 14-year-old son Samo (Gaetan Claudia) lands in hospital that leaves him in need...

A delay in granting three African actors visas to attend the Berlin Film Festival to promote their competition movie Felicitie on Saturday led the film's writer/director to lash out at Europe's debate about its position amid the refugee crisis.

"They were held up for three days to attend one of the greatest film festivals in the world," French helmer Alain Gomis said of Congolese actors Vero Tshanda Beya, Gaetan Claudia and Papi Mpaka. They were then allowed to board a plane to reach Berlin in time for their film's world premiere on Saturday night.

"Refugees have been in Europe for years...

After Sundance Film Festival concludes in late January, the next big cinematic event on the globe is the Berlin International Film Festival. With Paul Verhoeven serving as jury president for the 67th edition of the festival, they’ve now announced their first line-up of titles, including Aki Kaurismäki‘s The Other Side of Hope (pictured above), Oren Moverman‘s Richard Gere-led The Dinner, Sally Potter‘s The Party (pictured below), and Agnieszka Holland‘s Spoor, as well as a restoration of a Rainer Werner Fassbinder TV show.

Check out the first titles below, and return for our coverage from the festival.

Competition

A teströl és a lélekröl (On Body and Soul)

Hungary

By Ildiko Enyedi (My 20th Century, Simon the Magician)

With Géza Morcsányi, Alexandra Borbély, Zoltán Schneider

World premiere

Ana, mon amour

Romania/Germany/France

By Călin Peter Netzer (Child‘s Pose, Maria)

With Mircea Postelnicu, Diana Cavallioti,...