MACHÉRIE EKWA B. EKWEEN (DR Congo)

Machérie was born in Kisagani (Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1993. She is trained through various film and screenwriting workshops while studying law and starts working in the production department of different films: Kimpa Vita: La mère de la Révolution africaine (2014) and Felicité (2015). In 2016, he writes the scripts for six episodes of the series Ndakisa: Lobi Mokola ya sika, funded by the NGO Search For Common Ground.

Maki’la (2018) is her first work as a director, an intimate portrait of poverty, femininity and survival of street children in Kinshasa. Maki’la is an authentic depiction of the sad reality experienced by some 200,000 children in Kinshasa, a film that acknowledges both the brightness and darkness of a life in struggle.

In 2019 she released her second film, the medium-length film Sema (‘express yourself’ in Swahili), which gives voice to survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the process of healing from the traumatic experience through, among other things, art.