Les Galeries Présidentielles (French Trailer)

In 1970, Joseph Mobutu, the DRC’s second president, inaugurated with great fanfare a residential complex and shopping mall known as the “Galeries Présidentielles”. Paved in marble and equipped with the country’s first escalators, they became a symbol of the hope that followed independence. Today, the Galeries are not luxurious anymore: the marble is hollowed out, and the freight elevator acts as the residents’ elevator. Yet, they remain an emblematic building of the business center, a place where all kinds of people pass through: prosecutors, policemen, journalists and businessmen, but also domestic workers, dressmakers, shoe-shine boys and other street vendors…

The director lives in the Galeries and films the daily lives of the three people who bring this place to life, and with whom she has forged a bond: the freight elevator operator, the president of the syndicate and the parking lot attendant.

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