The meandering narrative has a lyrical quality consistent with the many musical numbers.

Full Review | Sep 25, 2018

Think High Noon set in Kinshasa and backed by a Congolese beat.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 19, 2018

This heady trip into downtown Kinshasa is as magnetic, and enigmatic, as its forceful central character.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 12, 2017

A heroic, award-winning central performance from the Congolese actress Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu is reason alone to see this often gripping, occasionally infuriating French-language melodrama.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 10, 2017

Beya ... arrives fully formed here as a figure of enormous dignity and warmth, a pillar of resilience who is nonetheless all-too-humanly susceptible to exhaustion, grief and despair.

Full Review | Nov 9, 2017

It's a film with seriousness and compassion, though a little lengthy and diffuse. Dramatic storm clouds gather and pass overhead without ever quite bursting into rain.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 9, 2017

Urgently expressive in colour and varied in texture, it's a Congolese Mother Courage.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 8, 2017

Félicité has a lyrical spirit that worms its way to the surface even at its most directionless.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 27, 2017

Mr. Gomis's cinematic style is spectacularly multifaceted. The camerawork and cutting often have the fleetness of a documentary, but there's nothing sloppy about them.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2017

Gomis's handheld cameras work to keep up with the actors, who seem to move with rare freedom, but he also stages some exquisite and complex flourishes ...

Full Review | Oct 24, 2017

The film's tonal range is formidable enough to suggest that this director may be a major talent who's now emerging from relative obscurity.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 24, 2017

The movie is a virtual documentary of city sights and moods, and also a bitter exposé of a country without a social safety net.

Full Review | Oct 23, 2017

Félicité is a work of art. It is also the anguish in everyday day survival when you are losing your will to live that makes the film largely captivating.

Full Review | Oct 12, 2017

Paints a dim picture of Kinshasa, but does it well.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 11, 2017

Alain Gomis never reconciles throughout how the film's disparate parts are meant to fit together.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 24, 2017

It's intense if somewhat choppy filmmaking, although the passion of the amateur cast and vividness of the Kinshasa locations help make up for the narrative shortcomings.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2017

Gomis' latest ... [weaves] a sensual, sometimes hopeful, sometimes disturbing urban tapestry with threads of image, sound, poetry, and song.

Full Review | Feb 12, 2017