26/05/2006

In recent days, Cannes audiences and critics have greeted Congorama [+see also:
trailer
film profile], this evening’s closing film of the Directors’ Fortnight, with delight.

Although Philippe Falardeau and Luc Déry, respectively the film’s director and executive producer, are Canadian, Congorama is a Belgian film, one of three at Cannes this year. Co-produced by Joseph Rouschop and filmed in Dardennes country, near Liege, Congorama tells the story of Michel (Olivier Gourmet), a Belgian in the Congo.

Michel is an inventor with no inventions to his name and son of a successful writer (Jean-Pierre Cassel) who is deaf and married to a Congolese woman with whom he has a black child. In other words, Michel’s origins are a bit hazy. Until the day "Two Years Earlier" (according to the film’s first caption) his father tells him that he is adopted and was actually born in Quebec.

Taking advantage of a business trip, he decides to go in search of his origins. Although he fails to find a man by the name of Legrand in a village inhabited by the Legros, he meets Louis (Paul Ahmarani), also the title of the second caption. Louis and Michel go for a ride in an electric car, an invention of Michel’s father, but are involved in an accident that leaves Louis in a coma and Michel oblivious to the truth.

First filmed from Michel’s perspective then from Louis’, before the story’s secret is finally revealed in a third act entitled "Two Years Later", Congorama is the story of a search for identity. With much skill and humour, Falardeau, who comes from the world of documentary filmmaking – his first was acclaimed mockumentary The Left Side of the Fridge (1999) – deftly sets up a long shot and reverse shot, a story where there are two of everything: points of view, fathers and origins, secrets and deception and, finally, brotherhood.

A co-production between micro_scope, Tarantula Belgique and Tarantula France, with the participation of SODEC, Téléfilm Canada, Wallimage, RTBF and backed by la Communauté Française de Belgique and the CNC, Congorama is being sold internationally by The Works .

(Translated from French)