Downstream to Kinshasa

Colonel Honorine Munyole is a robust forty-four-year-old widow and mother of seven young children – four of her own, three adopted. She wields her uniform, beret and black handbag like a protective shield, which her daily work desperately requires. More or less on her own, she runs a small police unit dedicated to protecting women who’ve been raped and children who’ve suffered abuse in the war-plagued regions of the Congo. At the start of Maman Colonelle, she’s transferred from Bukavu to Kisangani, arriving only to discover her future home and office in a desolate state. While she deals with such practical obstacles with suitable feistiness, the traumas and social deformities of the people around her have nightmarish dimensions: the envy surrounding those with state-recognised ‘victim’ status, hope for help from the ‘whites’, depression, helplessness.

Nestor, Aaron, Benjamin and Rafiki are economics undergraduates at the University of Bangui. Navigating between the overcrowded classrooms, the petty trades that allow students to survive, bribery lurking everywhere, Rafiki shows us what students lives are like in the Central African Republic, a shattered society where the youth keeps dreaming for a brighter future for their country.

In Kisangani, a group of high-school students who cannot afford to pay the teachers' "bonuses" organized themselves to prepare the State exam together.

Christian, Ben and Jean-Marie are fighting for political change of power and free elections in their country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But the incumbent President refuses to relinquish power. How can the course of events be changed? Must they join forces with the historical opposition leader and his powerful party? Is dialogue still possible or must they resign themselves to a popular uprising and the risk of a blood bath?

Documentary about elections in Congo.

Bangui, Central African Republic. 17 year-old Robert dreams of a career in music, but civil war is tearing the country apart. When both his parents are thrown into prison, he is left to look after his four younger siblings on his own, juggling daily life, odd jobs, school exams and concert stages, determined to follow his dream.

Taking in the wives of the unemployed, of unpaid government employees, the Kitambo maternity clinic in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo has to cope with its patients' lack of money. And negotiations are tough between the administration and the women. As long as the bill remains unsettled they are kept at the clinic, which only increases the cost of their stay. And here everything has a price, even a birth certificate. The women's protests against their poor accommodations or their claims that their husbands' pay is overdue can change nothing. The female administrator won't budge an inch. If you've no money, you stay put. "Hold me hostage instead of my wife," offers one man. A long suffering manager, herself at the mercy of the system, must negotiate collateral with them: a celebration dress, a pair of earrings, a suitcase, so they will return and pay in full.

61 years after his assassination, Patrice Lumumba returns to his country. "Congo returns to Congo" as one of his children said. Lumumba was a nationalist leader who intended to use his country's enormous wealth for the benefit of his people. He became the first Prime Minister in the history of Congo on June 30, 1960, when the country gained its independence after 80 years of Belgian colonial rule. Seven months later, he was assassinated in Katanga province with two of his best political allies: Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo. Their bodies were dissolved in sulfuric acid and only one of Patrice Lumumba's teeth remained. This "relic" was taken from Lumumba's corpse and kept in secret by a police commissioner until his death in 2000. The assassination of the nationalist and anti-colonialist leader was followed by the advent of the dictator Mobutu, who was able to remain in place until 1997, thanks to Western support.