Before the release of his first feature film, Augur, on screens, on November 29, director Baloji continues previews and festivals in Europe and campaigns for the Oscars: he represents Belgium for the prize for best foreign film. His choral film, which tells the story of four Congolese people struggling with tradition and witchcraft trials, has already won several awards. In May, in Cannes, in the selection In some perspective, he won the New Voice Prize, then in August that for directing at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival. Not bad for a rapper who, until then, had only made short films, the first to illustrate his song, Peau de chagrin – Night Bluethen the following, Kaniama Show And Zombies, before diving into the deep end of cinema.
The former member of the Belgian hip-hop group Starflam has led an atypical solo career for more than fifteen years, with an extraordinary visual demand and albums as varied as they are rare, very soulful. Hotel Impala (2007) and its African version, Kinshasa Branch (2011), refined 137 avenue Kaniama (2018). At the end of November, he will publish the first songs from the four EPs, which will bear the name of each of the characters in his film: Koffi, Paco, Tshala and Mama Mujila.
Not content with being a protean artist, Baloji is also a model. And, rather than being present in the front row of the fashion shows, he embedded himself in the workshops of the big houses to study the fabrics, the materials, which allowed him to make, with his accomplice Elke Hoste, the costumes of his film, the prototypes of which he is exhibiting until June 2024 at the Antwerp Fashion Museum.
Break the clichés
Despite a first film which presents itself under happy auspices, Baloji seems pessimistic. His stay in Los Angeles in October reassured him about the film’s reception in the United States, but as for being in the race for the Oscars, he has few illusions: “The members of the Academy have ninety foreign films to watch, he sums up in a hotel room in Brussels. It’s complicated to attract attention and, on the other hand, there are only legends, great masters: Aki Kaurismäki who is in his twenty-fifth film and who is competing for Finland, Wim Wenders [sélectionné par le Japon]…”
Despite his price on the Croisette, he is still skeptical about the reception that France can give him : “If I manage to stay on screen for two weeks, I will be happy. » Baloji fears that audiences will be confused by his film’s emphasis on the marvelous, what he calls the “magical realism”, mix of Brothers Grimm tales and African superstitions.
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