Democratic Republic of the Congo Congo, Belgium and UK / 2015 / 67mins / Documentary / French and Lingala

Kinshasa, “Kin la Belle” is a city of 10 million people without a single cinema. The story of the city, its apartheid era, and Mobutu’s neo colonialism, unfolds through the fate of its cinemas. At the same time, La Belle celebrates the Kinshasa cowboys who found their identity in the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s. Through interviews and poetic imagery, La Belle at the Movies bears a unique testimony to an African film industry in crisis.

Cecilia Zoppelletto

Cecilia, born in Padua, Italy and based in London since 1994, has worked as a news producer for the Italian national broadcasting company RAI and as TV host and writer for the Italian network Antenna Tre Nordest. Cecilia is a PhD researcher at the University of Westminster. Her research titled Decolonisation through ‘Development Films’: Constructing and Re-Constructing the Zairian Spirit on Film explores the archives of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the country's national film image of post-independence. She is a documentary filmmaker, director and producer of La Belle At The Movies (2015), the short experimental film Falling (2017) and currently in production of the film Jews of Congo (working title). Learn More