“This Is Congo” is not an easy documentary to watch. And anyone who knows anything about the tumultuous, war-torn country would understand that from the get-go. Still, despite expectations, it is an engaging, if unsettling, film about the decades of violence that have ravaged the central African country, the poverty and displacement that has abounded, and all the stolen promise of a land so rich in culture and resources. Which, it might be argued, is to say it is a film about the Democratic Republic of Congo. And while “This Is Congo” is an immersive and captivating film that features incredible and upsetting footage of bloody battles filmed by director and cinematographer Daniel McCabe, it is a scattershot of characters and consequences that manage to capture what is undoubtedly a piece of the truth of the region, while also somehow feeling incomplete.
“This Is Congo” starts with the war. It is a war that has been raging for at least two decades, mostly between the government forces and the many rebel groups that control vast swaths of the resource-rich eastern portion of the country, which is far-removed from the capital of Kinshasa. Trapped in the grips of this conflict are four people upon whom the film builds its story: a young and popular military commander, a whistleblower elsewhere in the army, an illegal mineral trader, and a displaced tailor. Their stories, without ever overlapping or connecting, come together to paint a grisly picture of the war — both of those who fight it and those whose lives are irrevocably impacted by it. The conflict at the heart of the film is over the battle for Goma, a city situated in the North Kivu province on the border with Rwanda. When the film begins, in 2012, rebels are threatening the town and the young military commander, Mamadou, is tasked with pushing them back.
While Mamadou more or less becomes the central focus of the film as it progresses, the mineral trader, Mama Romance, and the displaced tailor, Hakiza Nyantaba, stand in as ciphers for the average people caught up in the violence. Despite laws against selling minerals outside the country, Mama Romance knows that is the only way to care for her family. And so, despite the battles raging around her, she persists and continues living her life in the face of danger. Nyantaba watched his life fall apart as the war came to his village. Fleeing to refugee camps, the only thing he brings along each time he is forced to move is his sewing machine, the tool that allows him to keep providing for his family. To generalize, they represent the toll of the conflict; the way lives are halted long before they actually end, boxed inside the confines of war, and yet how lives — and the people living them — persevere despite everything.
The story that “This Is Congo” seems most interested in telling, though, is Mamadou’s. He is a strikingly young man who is, over and again, described as a patriot and a fearless leader. But, the film seems to say, these are beside the point. What is most important about Mamadou is his charisma, that the young men who follow him believe so completely in him and his capabilities simply because he is there leader. All they want, “This Is Congo” says, is a leader. After a fierce battle to push back the rebel groups from Goma, Mamadou is hailed as a savor by his troops and the men and women of the city who sing songs about his greatness. All of this is contrasted with the history of Congo portrayed in the film, of a country bent to the whims of European tyrants for decades only to be forced, by America, into the arms of a homegrown dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu made himself an idol and, like dictators the world over, made people worship him until his demise in the late ‘90s.
After Mamadou’s victory in Goma, army generals from the capital arrive to tour the battlegrounds with reporters. And while Mamadou seems eager to give them credit for planning the battle, they all quickly say the entire thing was designed by President Joseph Kabila; because every good thing that happens only happens because of Kabila. Because of Mobutu before him, and so on. In the eyes of “This Is Congo,” desperation leads people to starve for a savior, for someone who can end the conflict. And in a country that has been so ruthlessly ravaged by Europe and the West, a country that has not been allowed to exist on its own terms for so long, men are eager to take advantage of this desperation, to use it for their gain, to make themselves idols. It’s a stark and unsettling truth that “This Is Congo” manages to flesh out thoroughly enough to make up for its flaws elsewhere. [B]