As part of Film Africa 2025 (14-23 November), presented by the Royal African Society, the festival’s DRC spotlight, DRC Now: Rising Voices, celebrates a new generation of Congolese photographers who are offering a new way of seeing contemporary Congolese photography beyond national borders. At its heart is Congo RE-Vue, a free digital exhibition at The Africa Centre, opening 14 November (3-5 pm) and running throughout the festival.
Cecilia Zoppolletto has written a short op-ed, below, on the changing landscape of the art world in the DRC.
Congo RE-Vue was born from my conversations with a generation of young photographers at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa. They wanted more than visibility; they wanted to tell their stories their own way. When the call for Congo RE-Vue went out, voices came from across Kinshasa and beyond. What followed — produced by ZOPMEDIA with ZEKE and Preston Witman Productions — was a shared space for expression, not mediation, presented in a digital format within a gallery. This approach matters: it lets Congolese artists under 30 to reach audiences outside their country without the prohibitive costs of travel or printing. The screen becomes a bridge, allowing their work to travel and to be seen.
Most photographers have an online presence, some with few followers, some more but the small screen somehow does not give the platform and the acknowledgment of the work as such, a fine art image. Its digital form works in their favour: it lifts the work beyond the noise of social media and gives each image the pause it deserves. Each chapter titled in lingala, one of the four national languages, Moko (one), Mibale (two), Misato (three) unfolds in a continuum of stories and points of view. Arsène Mpiana transforms urban floods into dark lyricism; Christelle Emulu freezes the sensual pulse of rumba in her Mabina series; Hardy Bope re-imagines photojournalism as chromatic poetry; Fortune Lula listens to the whispers between water and survival; Kande Ngandu captures that suspended second when time itself hesitates.
I see in their work the opposite of the “crisis imagery” that has long defined the Congo. They are not performing resilience for export. All the things that have been said before: floods, men worshipping local religious icons, mountains of trash piled up to stop the erosions that keep eating the city away. Yet now, it looks different, nostalgic, affectionate, aware of the imperfections and still in love with the country and its magical city, Kinshasa. Honestly, it feels almost rebellious to look this way at a scene so long flattened by outsiders’ eyes.
Curating their work has allowed me to take part in an affirmation of a city and a people that have always felt safe, idiosyncratic, full of joy and yet have often left others surprised by my choice. The images in Congo RE-Vue are acts of sovereignty, an insistence on joy on Mboka Elengi, as it’s often said in Lingala: the nation of joy.
Cecilia Zoppelletto is an Italian filmmaker, producer, and scholar based in DRCongo. Founder of ZOPMEDIA and Vice-Chair of African Film Festival Inc. (New York), she creates films and curates projects highlighting Congolese cinema and visual arts, includingCongo RE-Vue. She teaches Film and Photography at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Kinshasa.
