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Kinshasa, Congo. Around 30,000 children are accused of witchcraft and are kicked out of their homes. Living on the street, José and his friends - all treated like witch children - decide to form a music band to ward off bad luck with a crazy impresario called Bebson. Together they will rock Kinshasa!

"I chose to write this film as a piece of fiction, using the language and style of documentaries to capture the spirit of Kinshasa: its humour and pathos, resourcefulness and deceit. It seemed that the best way to develop this film was to follow several different story lines and watch them come together like pieces of a puzzle. Yet it would have been impossible for the characters to meet without having to determine their fate. This is why we decided to turn the initial project into a fictional tale, while still retaining a documentary style. The story started to take shape when we were location hunting. Children began to tell us about their lives and their hardship. We started to see the difficulties this population faced - their struggle to survive whether shegués (street children), musicians, workers, mothers, disabled people, or corrupt policemen." (Marc-Henri Wajnberg)

 

Marc-Henri Wajnberg (Belgium, 1953) is a scriptwriter, director, actor and producer. Wajnberg has directed documentaries, short films, a series of very short films, animated films, as well as a full-length feature film dating back to 1993 called Just Friends. His films have received many awards and are distributed throughout the world. As a producer, he made a series of 33 documentaries for ARTE, as well as a docu-fiction co-produced with Lars Von Trier. Kinshasa Kids is his second feature film.