Congo River
directed by Thierry Michel, Belgium 2006, 116’
For as long as there has been film, European documentary filmmakers have been tempted by the thought of journeying along the Congo River, with its observational and, thanks to Conrad, metaphorical potential. Thierry Michel's acclaimed documentary remains the best-known result of just such an undertaking. The credit for this is by and large due to the film’s spectacular cinematography and skillfully interwoven registers involving a great story about a tragic history and micro-stories about the everyday life of the Congolese. The former is marked not only by tracks—the railroad from a hundred years earlier—disappearing in dense vegetation or the ruins of a megalomaniac’s palace, but also by women mutilated by rape whose gynecologist from the local hospital has nothing to treat them with. Contemporary scenes in Michel's film are supplemented by old footage that bring to life Stanley and Livingstone, the brutal colonizer Leopold II, Lumumba, Mobutu and Kabila.
- 2006 Berlinale
