Lumumba (2000)

Director:

Raoul Peck

Writers:

Pascal Bonitzer (writer)
Dan Edelstein (English dubbed version)

Release Date:

27 September 2000 (Belgium)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | History | War

Plot:

The true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo...

Plot Keywords:

Belgium | Military | Congo | Assassination | Patrice Lumumba

Awards:

4 wins & 6 nominations

Cast

Eriq Ebouaney	...	Patrice Émery Lumumba
Alex Descas	...	Joseph Mobutu
Théophile Sowié	...	Maurice Mpolo (as Théophile Moussa Sowie)
Maka Kotto	...	Joseph Kasa Vubu
Dieudonné Kabongo	...	Godefroid Munungo
Pascal N'Zonzi	...	Moïse Tshombe
André Debaar	...	Walter J. Ganshof Van der Meersch
Cheik Doukouré	...	Joseph Okito
Makena Diop	...	Thomas Kanza (as Oumar Diop Makena)
Mariam Kaba	...	Pauline Lumumba
Rudi Delhem	...	Général Emile Janssens
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Francis Adam	...	Le maître d'hôtel
Alain Bouillé	...	Le pilote du Dakota
Mata Gabin	...	Helene Bijou
Edgar Henri Mato	...	Un ministre
Den Thatcher	...	Frank Carlucci
Paul Tingay

Also Known As:

Lumumba, retour au Congo (France) (working title)

Runtime:

115 min | Argentina:120 min (Mar del Plata Film Festival)

Country:

France | Belgium | Germany | Haiti

Language:

French | Lingala

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

South Africa:13V | New Zealand:M | Argentina:16 | Australia:M | France:U | Netherlands:16

Filming Locations:

Belgium

Company:

Arte

Trivia:

Visa d'exploitation en France # 86742.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Patrice Émery Lumumba: [voice over narration] You never knew about that night in Katanga. No one was to know.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Cinemania (2002)

A film that is horrific and unsettling, but real. Excellent.

Congo is a sad country which started with massive disadvantages (King Leopold used it as his private route to personal wealth) and never recovered.

The Belgians made little provision for independence, but that is not unusual in Africa and other countries have managed OK despite a bad start. Congo never did.

A combination of tribal and ethnic conflicts, underhand colonial behaviour and Cold War politics meant that failure was inevitable. Lumumba was brutally murdered by his own countrymen with America and Belgium cheering from the sidelines.

Lumumba never had a chance and he made it worse for himself by delivering an un-programmed and fiercely anti-colonial speech on Independence Day. This is not made too clear in the film - you have to listen really hard to know that that is what was happening. As a result of that unwise speech, he destroyed his relations with the Belgians and gave the Congolese people hopes and expectations that could never be realised.

He also made an enemy of the leader of the Katanga region.

He was thus regarded by his own people as having reneged on promises after an impossibly short time in Government and then, having been publicly and privately brutalised by Congolese troops, finally murdered by the Congolese leader in Katanga, who ordered two Belgian policemen to dig up and destroy the body. All true and faithfully, if gruesomely, repeated in the film.

Everyone comes out badly in the film - which is only right and proper. Belgians for practising apartheid before the word was invented to cover the Boers in SA. How could anyone operate a system where, as a native, you had to be assessed to see if you had developed (`evolved' - shades of Darwin) sufficiently to be licensed to have wine in your house?

The Americans come out rather lightly in the film. Maybe it was not known at the time the film was made that the CIA station chief (Devlin, not Carlucci) was sent poisoned toothpaste to introduce into Lumumba's bathroom cabinet (he didn't). By order of Eisenhower.

The Congolese come out worst of all, appropriately, since in the long term they are the ones who also suffered (and continue to suffer) the most as a result of not being able to act together irrespective of tribal origin.

There is still in reality no country that is Congo. It remains a collection of tribal and ethnic groupings. And therefore weak and poor and ready to be exploited. All this is accurately foreshadowed in this excellent film.

A film that is horrific and unsettling, but real. Excellent.