Benda Bilili!
A real-life world music fairytale, Benda Bilili! tells the incredible true story behind Kinshasa’s ghetto stars, Staff Benda Bilili, and their distinctive musical style; a seductive mix of Congolese rumba, James Brown-esque funk, Cuban mambo, ancestral trance and Jimi Hendrix-esque flourishes.
Ricky has a dream: to make Staff Benda Bilili the best band in Congo, Kinshasa. Roger, a street child, more than ever wants to join these stars of the ghetto, who get around in customized tricycles.
Together, they must avoid the pitfalls of the street, stay united and find the force to hope in music.
For six years, from the first rehearsals to the release of their acclaimed debut album and triumph at international festivals, Benda Bilili! (literal translated as “to look beyond appearances”) is the story of this dream come reality.
Opening Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival last year, Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye’s uplifting film is a frank and intimate portrait of the band, their musical energy and social observation of the realities of life in Kinshasa.
Benda Bilili!is a rare cinematic discovery, like Buena Vista Social Club, the film is set to lift the lid on the Congolese music scene, revealing a hotbed of extraordinary talent and creativity.
An inspiring tale of triumph over adversity, from the mean streets of Kinshasa to worldwide acclaim.
Benda Bilili! will be released by Trinity in cinemas 18 March 2011