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

| Sep 25, 2018

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

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

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

| 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.

| 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.

| 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.

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

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

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

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

| 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.

| 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 ...

| 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.

| 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.

| 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.

| Oct 12, 2017

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

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

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

| 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.

| Feb 12, 2017

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

| Feb 12, 2017