Screening of the documentary by Daniel McCabe | Finalist Masters section (+)
“This is Congo” by Daniel McCabe | Production: Turbo, Vision Films (USA, DRC 2017), 93'
Feature-length documentary This Is Congo provides an immersive and unfiltered look into the world’s longest continuing conflict and those who are surviving within it. By following four compelling characters — a whistleblower, a patriotic military commander, a mineral dealer and a displaced tailor — the film offers viewers a truly Congolese perspective on the problems that plague this lushly beautiful nation. Colonel ‘Kasongo’, Mamadou, Mama Romance and Hakiza exemplify the unique resilience of a people who have lived and died through the generations due to the cycle of brutality generated by this conflict. Though their paths never physically cross, the ongoing conflict reverberates across all of their lives.
Daniel McCabe graduated from Pratt Institute in New York with a BFA in Photography and Film. He started his journalistic career taking a staff news photographer position in one of New York’s daily newspapers and has also worked in the commercial and fashion industries shooting both stills and video. He began his freelance career documenting gang and prison related issues in Honduras, moving on to projects such as Kenya’s post-election violence, resource based conflict in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti’s 2010 earthquake and HIV in South Africa’s slums Khayelitsha and Cape Flats. For his projects in Democratic Republic of Congo, he received AOL’s groundbreaking innovator grant in 2019. He splits his time between Goma, DRC and Hudson, New York.