Viva Riva! at the New York African Film Festival

Slick, erotic, violent, funny, stylish, and vibrant, Viva Riva! took home six prizes at the Africa Movie Academy Awards last month, including best film and best director; last night it screened as the centerpiece of the New York African Film Festival. In interviews, director Djo Tunda Wa Munga has said that he wanted to adapt the gangster genre to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the plot has a textbook ring: man-on-the-make Riva returns to Kinshasa after several years in Angola, to sell stolen gas. As he makes his hedonistic way across the capital, he falls for the local tough guy's girl and tries to avoid retribution from the Angolans he robbed. Though the mix of bloodshed, humor, and sex strikes a familiar chord to anyone who's seen something by Tarantino or his imitators, the motivations here are very different: as the two lead actors (Patsha Bay and Hoji Fortuna) posited in the Q-and-A afterward, decades of war and poverty have driven some Congolese to a "libertine" existence, in which life comes cheap and immediate pleasure seems the only goal worth seeking. Seeing it after Kinshasa Symphony, which shows a very different side of Congo, reminded us of the incredible diversity of experiences in this fascinating country.

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