National Diploma - True/False Film Fest

National Diploma

Determined Congolese students band together to pass a high-stakes graduation exam. From True Vision honoree Dieudo Hamadi.
Director: Dieudo Hamadi
Runtime: 1:32
In-person: director Dieudo Hamadi and producer Quentin Laurent
Fest Year: 2018
Across the Democratic Republic of Congo, a half-million teenagers look to pass the national exam, a necessary step for anyone who aspires to postsecondary education and high-level jobs. True Vision honoree Dieudo Hamadi — who took the exam himself as a young adult — follows a group of students who are expelled from high school after failing to pay tuition. Undaunted, the ambitious scholars band together, rent a dilapidated building, and convert it into a makeshift school, where they teach themselves math, philosophy, and all of the other subjects key to the exam. With the test looming, anxious students find themselves resorting to unorthodox techniques. Hamadi’s film is an engrossing look at a broken system and a young generation struggling to correct it. (CB)