Portal:African cinema/Selected score/11

Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu, the lead actress of Félicité at 2017 Berlinale

Félicité (2017) is a Senegalese drama film by Alain Gomis. The film was entered as the Senegalese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards and was shortlisted. It tells the story of how a single mother who works as a bar entertainer struggles to get funds after her child is hospitalized. The film featured Kasai Allstars, a Congolese "tradi-modern" musical collective of 25 musicians based in Kinshasa. They wrote and recorded most of the film's music. The soundtrack album was entitled Around Félicité.


It was selected to compete for the Golden Bear in the main competition section of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. At Berlin, the film won the Jury Grand Prix award. At the 2017 Africa Movie Academy Awards, it won six awards which is the highest for a film in the history of the award ceremony winning the award for Best Soundtrack amongst other awards. The film currently has 98% rating based on 46 critics’ reviews on the review aggregator website, Rotten Tomatoes.