If you thought The Buena Vista Social Club was an amazing true-life story of musical triumph, wait till you meet Staff Benda Bilili! Award-winning documentarists Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye were shooting in the Congolese capital when they came across a group of street musicians whose spirited performances belied their hardscrabble existence. Here they found polio victims, street children, the physically handicapped – Kinshasa’s lost and abandoned souls coming out fighting. With their uplifting autobiographical songs and tight rhythm section however, Staff Benda Bilili need no musical special pleading, and after the filmmakers bankroll a debut album, the band reach the European festival circuit on their own merit. It’s quite a story! For Benda Bilili, living out their dreams soon means getting their heads round the distance they’ve travelled, but this astute doc never loses touch with street-level reality, or suggests that the global spotlight will solve all the problems of these plucky individuals or their ravaged society. (Notes by Trevor Johnston).