The wonderful and humbling Benda Bilili! (NI 440) by Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye followed the mostly paraplegic Kinshasa band, enlightening us on the way about life in Africa’s third-largest city, and human potentiality and happiness. No small feat!
Immensely powerful and compassionate was Bill Weissman and David Weber’s doc We were here (NI 448), which looked back on San Francisco’s AIDS epidemic. Céline Sciamma’s feature Tomboy? (NI 446), about a 10-year-old girl pretending to be a boy, didn’t sentimentalize and similarly showed that when people really connect with each other, they can overcome. A gem.
