MAKALA

Director: Emmanuel Gras

France/Congo, 95

Cast: Kabwita Kasongo

 

This quietly powerful documentary shot in Congo is a story where it is the journey, rather than any destination, that provides the drama. Kasongo is a young man living in a village with few resources or signs of the modern world. To provide for his family, he cuts down a tree to make charcoal, and then by foot and bicycle, lugs his precious cargo to the closest town market. Like De Sica’s Bicycle Thief, this existential, small-scale quest engages our emotions as much as any epic.