In 1962, Haitian child Raoul Peck joined his parents, working in Congo, formerly Belgian, newly independent. Two years earlier, Patrice Lumumba, a mythical figure of Congolese independence, was killed in Katanga. From a photograph found by his mother where the Congolese leader appears, the child, turned filmmaker, realizes thirty years later, a very personal and sensitive film where biography and history, testimonies and archives constitute the frame of a reflection around the figure of Lumumba, his political assassination, the media and the memory.
“Before the age of the Internet, before digital archives could be accessed, a young Congolese who wanted to speak about his own history – when he finally could access his own archive – had to pay $3,000 for a minute of archival footage in broadcasting rights. [... ] Before we left for Congo we found out that the Mobutu regime’s services were expecting us. It was too dangerous, we had to cancel the trip and lost a number of producers. As a result we took a creative decision that gave the film its strength: we decided to shoot Lumumba in Brussels, the very city where the plan to murder him was hatched. We turned a setback into a dramatic twist and in fact integrated it into the film and that in turn gave a reflexive quality to the importance of the image (both mental and as material) in the documentary.” (Raoul Peck)
French spoken, English subtitles
