Congo Boy Brings a Refugee's True Story to Locarno's Piazza Grande
A 90-minute film about a Congolese teenager raising four siblings in a war-displaced family screened under the open sky of Locarno's Piazza Grande on Tuesday, 11 August, as the 79th Locarno Film Festival turned its largest venue over to a director who lived the story himself.
Congo Boy, directed by Rafiki Fariala, follows Robert, a 17-year-old refugee in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, who cares for his younger brothers and sisters after his parents are imprisoned — all while chasing a future as a musician. The film is a co-production between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic, produced by Mahongo Films with Kiripifilms (the company of Congolese documentarian Dieudo Hamadi) and France's Unité (The Hollywood Reporter).
The story is Fariala's own. He told The Hollywood Reporter that the character of Robert is really himself, and that he was genuinely shot at, as depicted on screen. His family fled the Congo because of war; war then followed them into the Central African Republic. They planned to reach Benin and eventually Europe, but were arrested because their passports and refugee card showed a different country of origin.
Fariala is a self-taught musician and the son of Congolese parents, based in the Central African Republic. He previously made the 2022 documentary We, Students!, turning the camera on himself and his classmates at Bangui University. That film was censored in the Central African Republic, and Fariala went into exile in France — again as a refugee. He is an alumnus of the Ateliers Varan documentary film school in Paris, and Congo Boy was developed through the Ouaga Film Lab in 2022 before being completed in 2025 (Ateliers Varan; Atlas Ateliers).
The cast was assembled through street casting. Fariala brought a French casting director onto his Central African crew to find his lead, Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset, whom he called his double. The ensemble also features Christy Djomanda Louba, Pétruche Mbomba, Rosiana Kotozia, Gloria Ambacko and Dieufera Sana. The screenplay was written by Fariala, Tommy Baron and Boris Lojkine, with cinematography by Adrien Lallau and editing by César Simonot (The Hollywood Reporter).
Congo Boy had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival — a section devoted to innovative, formally daring work from emerging directors. There, Dembeasset won the best actor honour. Variety described the film, a musical drama, as "beating with the rhythms of resilience" (Variety). World sales are handled by The Party Film Sales, which closed distribution deals in several key territories after the Cannes prize (Screen Daily).
What gives the film its charge is the voice behind it. Fariala told THR he wants audiences to understand that refugees are not beggars, and that he is proud to be a refugee. A film that began as a pitch at a development lab in Burkina Faso is now travelling the European festival circuit on its own terms — not as a plea, but as a piece of cinema.
The Locarno screening on 11 August placed Congo Boy on the Piazza Grande, the festival's 8,000-seat open-air venue, putting Fariala's story in front of one of the largest public audiences any festival can offer.
