Félicité is not another downbeat film about Africa steeped in miserablist tendencies. Gomis and company don't lose the sight of happiness in the daily lives of its ordinary citizens.

| Jul 17, 2020

A Kinshasa-set hybrid of kitchen sink drama and dreamy musical.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 8, 2019

With the newcomer Véro Mputu onboard, Gomis didn't restrain himself from sailing this boat with courage and emotion.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 1, 2019

FELICITE is an enlightening tale that details life in central Africa, set in a milieu of a cabaret singer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 4, 2018

With a brilliantly nuanced performance from Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu, simultaneously sullen, vivacious, coquettish, Félicité is the African riposte to the West's obsession with female portraits.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 18, 2018

Félicité might feel like two movies in one but both parts are ravishing, both unmissable.

| Original Score: A | Oct 17, 2018

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

| Sep 25, 2018

Félicité contains some of the most powerful moments you'll see in any movie this year. However, Gomis' film never quite amounts to the sum of its impressive parts, its fantasy sequences distracting from, and superfluous to, the main action.

| Aug 26, 2018

Félicité's wonderful soundtrack supplements its incredible writing and editing, and it is my favorite movie so far this year.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 26, 2018

Everyone may agree on how artful and powerful it is as a human condition study, but not on how entertaining it is.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 24, 2018

But alongside the documentary detail and casual inequality - at one point Felicite hires on commission a policeman as her debt collector - there are nocturnal interludes, artful detail.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 7, 2018

... introduces you to people who are enigmatic yet real, and to a country that's ferocious, alive, and resilient enough to survive the worst-like the film's frowning heroine.

| Feb 9, 2018

The film's elements ultimately come together to form a portrait of Félicité, as well as of life in this struggling city. It feels like a cliché to have to note the resilience, cooperation and ingenuity that keep both Félicité and her environment together

| Jan 31, 2018

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

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

Gomis approaches her performances with a gritty, gorgeous series of impressions.

| Jan 18, 2018

A neo-realist tale with a soupcon of magical realism that is totally irresistible.

| Jan 16, 2018

...the film doesn't wallow in her dire circumstances and instead celebrates the agency and beauty that exists all around her.

| Jan 9, 2018

[Véro Tshanda] Beya is an unvarnished talent, but she holds the scenario together through the sheer force of her presence

| Jan 8, 2018

The result is a musical and visual feast that is not world-denying, but rather world-affirming in its careful exposition of the quiet pleasures of day-to-day life, and the godly beauty to be found in the resolve of everyday people and relationships.

| Dec 29, 2017

In all, Felicite strikes a powerful chord, taking us into a society in which every reward feels hard won.

| Dec 8, 2017