Yurugu – Invisible Lines

Rooted in the wisdom of ancestral ecology, the experimental essay film journeys through the fractured terrain left by the colonial dismemberment of inter-being relations – between cultures, between humans and non-humans, between the visible and the unseen. The Berlin Conference of 1885, a spectral wound in our shared memory, marks one of the sharpest incisions in this long dislocation.
Yurugu – Invisible Lines evokes the gift of re-membering what was dismembered by the colonial project. Through dreamscapes, ritualized practices of sharing and ancestral rhythms, it renders visible the invisible lines that once held communities and ecosystems in sacred balance. Disorienting the colonial gaze, the film offers a multiplicity of textures and temporalities as a process of healing – inviting a recoding of aesthetics and storytelling rooted in cosmologies of care, reciprocity and continuity.

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo (Mwalimu) is a Congolese filmmaker, ancestral ecologist and educator whose work blends Afrofuturist poetics with social critique. In 1994 he co- founded Maideni, an ecological youth movement, and in 2000 he co-founded Yole!Africa. Ndaliko Katondolo teaches and consults regularly for international organizations, addressing social, ecological and political inequity among marginalized groups through culture and art. Following Matata (2019), Kapita (2020), Kumbuka (2022) and Mikuba (2025) this is his fifth participation in Forum Expanded.

Laurent Van Lancker studied film and anthropology and holds a PhD in audiovisual art. He lectures at film schools and universities and is Professor of Audiovisual Anthropology at Aix-Marseille University. He co-founded the SIC – SoundImageCulture and BAAB.space project labs. Van Lancker has made fifteen films and won several awards. His works draw on various modes – collaborative, hybrid and sensory cinema – and propose a dialogue between ethics and aesthetics, poetics and politics.

Directors Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Laurent Van Lancker. Cinematography Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Laurent Van Lancker. Editing Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Laurent Van Lancker. Sound Design Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Laurent Van Lancker, Yashaswini Raghunandan. Producers Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Laurent Van Lancker. Production companies Alkebu Film Production (Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo), Polymorfilms (Brüssel, Belgium).

Films

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo: 2004: Lamokowrang. 2019: Matata (Forum Expanded 2020). 2020: Kapita (Forum Expanded 2021). 2022: Kumbuka (Forum Expanded 2022). 2023: Mahere. 2025: Mikuba (Forum Expanded 2025), Katasumbika. 2026: Yurugu – Invisible Lines.

Laurent Van Lancker: 2004: Reflectors. 2006: Surya. 2009: Majjudo, Lost Man. 2010: disorient. 2016: Brak (Fallow). 2017: Kalès. 2022: we others. 2026: Yurugu – Invisible Lines.