Maka Kotto Movies

A minor scooter accident turns into a comic nightmare for an aimless young man and his friends in Pierre Jolivet's Zim and Co. Victor Zimbietrovski, or Zim (Adrien Jolivet, the director's son), works hard, but not in any organized way. He plays guitar in a band, and he has a couple of odd jobs, off the books. He lives with his easygoing mother (Nathalie Richard) and he gets by. But when he accidentally sideswipes a vengeful motorist, he ends up in a great deal of trouble. He tests positive for marijuana, and because it's his second offense, there's a good possibility he'll have to do time. The judge tells Zim he might avoid jail if he can prove that he has a job. Zim manages to land a job working for a sporting goods company by telling them he has a car. Now he has ten days to produce a high-school diploma, a driver's license, and a car, or he'll probably end up in the slammer. He turns to his friends, who have problems of their own. Arthur (Yannick Nasso) has to deal with his strict father, who tells Arthur he doesn't "deserve to be French" when Arthur's kicked out of a mechanic's training program by the bigoted teacher. Cheb (Mhamed Arezki) is trying to sell the latest gadget he's invented, a cell phone locator, while Cheb's cousin Safia (Naidra Ayadi) has been fired from her waitress job for dipping into the till, and needs a new place to live. Still, the four stalwart, resourceful friends band together against an uncaring and often racist bureaucracy, determined to help Zim stay free. Zim and Co. was shown by the Film Society of Lincoln Center as part of their Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in 2006. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Patrice Lumumba was a passionate advocate for freedom in colonial Africa, and when the Belgian Congo was granted independent (and was later renamed Zaire), Lumumba was the new nation's first prime minister. However, Lumumba's dream of freedom and dignity for the people of the Congo made him a controversial and dangerous figure, and this biographical drama explores his short, tumultuous life. We first encounter Lumumba (Eriq Ebouaney) in the late 1950's, when his National Congo Movement is gaining widespread public support, despite opposition from the nation's political leaders. Hoping to avoid a violent overthrow, the Belgian government begins negotiations with the NCM to turn rule of the Congo over to the citizens, and Lumumba and his political party are swept into power during the nation's first independent election. However, Lumumba's desire to bring a peaceful and orderly transfer of power soon earns him enemies of all political stripes. Militant advocates for freedom demand that white Belgian officers of the nation's military be replaced with African soldiers at once, while Belgian colonists are met with violence, sparking a revolt by the white settlers that leads to a bloody civil war. Lumumba was directed and co-written by Raoul Peck, who previously directed the acclaimed documentary Lumumba: Death of a Prophet. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Police detective Jacques Laniel's life becomes a nightmare the day drive-by shootists gun down his partner Thomas Colin. His colleagues make matters worse by blaming him for the death, and after his wife leaves him, Laniel decides to quit the force and launch a private investigation into Colin's murder. Soon afterward, Laniel finds the bullet-riddled body of famed author and literature professor Zachary Osborne tied to his car hood. The professor's wife hires Laniel to solve the murder, but what the detective finds is ugly: Osborne was a part of a lucrative land-speculation deal that involved the sale of a crumbling old rectory that had been turned into a halfway house called the Haven of the Monsters. The name is apt, for all the residents are convicted killers who were given inordinately light sentences. Up to this point in the plot, the film has been a standard crime thriller. But when Lanier starts questioning the Haven's tenants and their crimes are revealed via flashback, it takes on the character of a David Lynch production. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Two very different people become friends and partners in this nautical drama. Nikos (Stephen Rea) is a radio man working on a Greek freighter when he finds himself stranded in Hong Kong after the firm that owned his ship suddenly goes out of business. Nikos is already depressed over his recent breakup with his girlfriend, and this latest turn of events hardly makes him feel any better; he develops a dependence on opium as he works a variety of odd jobs trying to keep himself together while waiting for his ship to return to the sea. Li (Ling Chu) is a ten-year-old Chinese girl, cut off from her mother and father, who has a sampan and asks Nikos to help her get the boat ready for the water. Nikos doesn't much care for Li at first, but her youthful optimism and determination to succeed make an impression on him, and in time he leads her on a voyage to find the family she left behind years before. Director Marion Hansel's work on this film was honored with a Golden Palm nomination at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The recolonization of Africa, this time by the very blacks who had to flee it as exiles during the time of the original French occupation, is the theme of this political comedy. Adiza, who has been living well in France, has decided that she will return and buy the plantation she and her compatriots were expelled from, and enlists some unlikely helpers to bring them back into the country and enact their plot. Meanwhile, these "local" blacks are unwittingly accepted by the other landowners as more cheap labor. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this comedy-drama, a young but sterile man suddenly wants to be a father. A friend calls this the "kangaroo complex," because male kangaroos do not have pouches to carry their offspring. So Loic (Roland Giraud, just out of his starring role in Trois Hommes et une Couffin later to be remade in the U.S. as Three Men and a Baby), goes looking for a solution to his "complex." He cannot have children himself because of a bad case of the mumps when he was in his mid-20s. That does not leave many options open to him until he accidentally comes across his old girlfriend with her 6-year-old son and notes that the little boy looks a lot like him. It does not take much to convince him that the boy is his own but once having reached that conclusion, the rest of his plan for new-found fatherhood is loaded with pitfalls. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi