Africa Is a Country

The Best African Movie

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Best African Movie

By
Sean Henry Jacobs

The Congolese film, Viva Riva, is no high-minded, French-funded "cinema" — it’s a gritty gangster film.

Patsha Bay in the title role in 'Viva Riva!'

The Congolese film “Viva Riva” won the “Best African Movie” award at the MTV Movie Awards. This recognition is invaluable for African cinema, offering publicity that money can’t buy and providing a significant boost when the film opens this weekend in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland (OR). (It’s worth noting that foreign films make up just 2% of US cinema screens, and African films account for a small percentage of that.)

Set in Kinshasa, Viva Riva follows Riva, a small-time hustler who returns to his hometown of Kinshasa, Congo, after a decade away, bringing with him a major score: a fortune in stolen gasoline. Riva finds himself pursued by an Angolan crime lord (whose gasoline he stole), and matters are complicated further when he falls for the girlfriend of a local gangster.

Manie Malone as Norma in director Djo Tunda wa Munga’s “Viva Riva!”

This is no high-minded, French-funded “cinema” — it’s a gritty gangster film.

The film’s PR describes Kinshasa as a “seductively vibrant, lawless, fuel-starved sprawl of shantytowns, gated villas, bordellos, and nightclubs,” with Riva as its perfect embodiment. The advance publicity also emphasizes the explicit nudity and violence that feature prominently in Viva Riva.

The other finalists for the award were “A Screaming Man” (Chad), “Life, Above All” (South Africa) and “Restless City” (Nigeria).

Further Reading

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.