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CANNES 2020 Marché du Film

AndanaFilms to tout Downstream to Kinshasa at Cannes Online Film Market

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- Specialising in documentaries, the French sales agent will stake its bets on Dieudo Hamadi’s Official Selection title and on Claire Simon’s upcoming post-production opus

AndanaFilms to tout Downstream to Kinshasa at Cannes Online Film Market
Downstream to Kinshasa by Dieudo Hamadi

For the very first time, French international sales agent AndanaFilms (steered by Stephan Riguet) will boast a film in Cannes’ Official Selection and a double premiere to boot since the title in question, Dieudo Hamadi’s Downstream to Kinshasa [+see also:
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, is also the first Congolese feature film to be chosen for this showcase. Co-produced by France and Belgium, the documentary will be screened (to buyers and other festivals, uniquely on invitation) on 24 and 26 June at the Cannes Film Festival’s Online Marché du Film.

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Downstream to Kinshasa is the director’s 5th feature after the highly acclaimed Atalaku (2013), National Diploma [+see also:
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(2014), Mama Colonel [+see also:
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(the winner of the Jury Award at the Berlinale Forum 2017 and of the Grand Prize at the Cinéma du Réel Festival) and Kinshasa Makambo [+see also:
trailer
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]
(Berlinale Panorama 2018). The film centres around the victims of the Six-Day War in Kisangani, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the setting of heavily armed conflict between the Ugandan and Rwandan armies from 5 – 10 June 2000) who, for the past 20 years, have been fighting for recognition of the conflict, condemnation of the belligerent parties and financial compensation. Appalled by the indifference of their rulers, these victims decide to embark upon a perilous journey along the Congo River to Kinshasa, the country’s capital, to make their voices heard…

Downstream to Kinshasa was produced by Congolese firm Kiripifilms and French group Les Films de l'Oeil Sauvage in co-production with Belgium’s Neon Rouge. The film’s various sources of support include the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, the CNC’s Aide aux Cinémas du Monde fund, TV5 Monde, RTBF, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, the Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur region, Venice’s Final Cut award, the IDFA Bertha Fund - IBF Classic, the Hot Docs Blue Eye Documentary Fund, Procirep-Angoa and the Brouillon d’un Rêve grant put forward by the Civil Society of Multimedia Authors (SCAM).

The Online Marché du Film will also see AndanaFilms kick off pre-sales on the documentary in post-production The Grocer’s Son, the Mayor, The Village and the World [+see also:
film review
film profile
]
by French director Claire Simon, a film adaptation of the documentary series Le Village. The film is set in Lussas where a group of people come together in an old house which was formerly the village grocery. Today, it has been transformed into the headquarters of a rather unexpected venture: the group are creating an SVOD platform for arthouse documentaries, like those shown in the August festival that has been a fixture there for thirty years. While the platform is in development, a huge building is constructed to accompany the expansion of this fledgling business. As the local farmers harvest fruit and make wine, the group work hard to fulfil their dream of creating their own tool for producing and broadcasting films…

Worth a final mention in the line-up is the documentary The Filmmaker’s House [+see also:
film review
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film profile
]
 by English director Marc Isaacs (headlining the Sheffield Doc/Fest). When a filmmaker is told his next film must be about crime, sex or celebrity to get funding, he takes matters into his own hands and begins shooting in his home with a cast of characters connected to his own life: two English builders employed to replace the garden fence temporarily remove the barrier between his house and that of a Pakistani neighbour, and a homeless Slovakian man charms the filmmaker’s Colombian cleaner to let him in. What follows tests everyone’s ideas of boundaries and hospitality.

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(Translated from French)

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