– BERLINALE 2026: The horrors of daily life in the eastern province of DR Congo and the anger of its citizens are at the heart of Elisé Sawasawa’s direct and disquieting documentary
Two middle fingers and a seven-letter expression starting with “f.” Going once, going twice… and again, from a Congolese teen. He’s in a furious frenzy, and it’s not clear whether his rage is aimed at the camera, MONUSCO (a peacekeeping branch of the UN operating in the DRC), or the world itself. Ultimately, it hardly matters who the target is: this boy has spent his entire life amidst the armed conflicts that have plagued the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past thirty years. First-time director Elisé Sawasawa’s documentary Enough Is Enough, selected in the Berlinale’s Panorama line-up, depicts many other people who share the same anger. They express their thoughts a little more expansively than the teen, but it all boils down to the same thing: life in this country involves little more than operating in survival mode.
The film’s emotional palette broadens slightly but it remains almost unequivocally dark: despair, hopelessness, resignation… And yet, there’s also a determination to hold on and survive this Gehenna, to see better days. They raise children, take part in military-style training, educate themselves, record songs, do street dances. Somewhere on the horizon, new residential buildings are popping up, as the locals are forced to carry on.
The film was shot between 2022 and 2025 in Sawasawa’s hometown of Goma, in eastern DRC. The crew worked exclusively with handheld cameras, natural lighting, and natural sound, so the connection between the audience and the protagonists forms quickly. The style is so evocative that we can almost smell the stench wafting from the muddy rubbish dump. And the film’s emotions are contagious, making it difficult to watch Enough Is Enough – subtitled “Story of an impossible country” – with any analytical distance. There’s little to discuss in strict artistic terms, but this is in no way a weakness of the film.
The director, who “was born to the rhythm of bullets” and is a survivor of the 2008 massacre, focuses on his fellow townspeople and their living conditions, whilst also providing some data to contextualize the political situation of the DRC. Ten million people have died over the last thirty years, and another seven million have been displaced. The current chapter of conflict is between the FARDC, the Congolese state army, and the rebel group, M23, aided by Rwandan troops. MONUSCO is widely considered ineffective by the locals, who want them gone. The DRC, previously named Zaire, has a long history of violence, dating back to Belgian colonisation and the bloody reign of King Leopold II, with just a brief chapter of hope during Patrice Lumumba’s presidency.
The documentary is only sixty-five minutes long, but each and every minute is charged, urgent, and important. And it quietly proves Wim Wenders wrong – cinema should not keep its distance from politics. In a land where history has repeated itself for decades, the camera becomes more than a recording device: it becomes an act of resistance and defiance. Enough Is Enough doesn’t promise solutions, but it demands attention, and sometimes that’s where change begins.
Enough Is Enough is steered by JBA Production (France) and Molakisi Films (DRC). World rights are still up for grabs.
