Reflective Encounters

“The Democratic Republic of Congo possesses the world’s largest stock of cobalt in the world. Cobalt is a rare metal used in consumer electronics such as the lithium-ion battery of an iPhone. Yet despite the abundance of such a precious resource, the DRC is one of the most economically deprived countries on the planet, due to neo-colonial exploitation.

It is within this context that the film Mulika is formed, and the generic conventions of science-fiction therefore take on a grounded political dimension rather than escapist fantasy. This rooting to reality is most pointedly expressed as our protagonist, an astronaut, walks the streets of the city of Goma, where the boundaries between fiction and documentary begin to collide. The eerie music, landscape shots, and the protagonist’s voice-over narration in the film’s opening brings to mind adaptations of Soviet sci-fi, such as Solaris, Stalker, and Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel.

Mulika’s sci-fi trappings illustrate the tensions between the genre’s preoccupation with technology and the material realities of bringing such technologies to life in our own capitalist world. As such, Mulika is a deeply melancholy film about the people of the DRC, and their exploitation by “vultures”, as the film itself describes them.”

— Cathy Brennan