Director Djo Tunda Wa Munga makes his mark with ‘Viva Riva!’

Djo Tunda Wa Munga is pretty much the entire film industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly called Zaire.

In fact, his acclaimed gangster film, “Viva Riva!,” which opens Friday at the Nuart, is the first feature film shot in the country in 25 years. And because there are no movie theaters in the country, Munga has made a deal with the French consulate in the capital of Kinshasa, formerly known as Leopoldville, to screen the film there in September.

“When I was a kid, I used to go to the theaters,” said Munga, 38, during a recent visit to L.A. “There were two theaters in my neighborhood in Kinshasa.”

Shot on location in Kinshasa in both French and the native language of Lingala, “Viva Riva!” is a visceral, documentary-style thriller about a small-time hood, Riva, who has returned to his hometown of Kinshasa after stealing a truckload of gasoline from an Angolan crime lord. Not only is the crime lord hot on his trail, Riva also is running into trouble with the mob boss husband of a beautiful woman he meets in a nightclub.

Because there is no native film industry, Munga had to hire an international crew. “The assistant director was Canadian,” he said. “The director of photography was a French guy, the sound engineer was from Switzerland and the makeup artist was Danish-French. But all the assistants were Congolese.”

“Viva Riva!” has already won numerous awards, including six major African Movie Academy Awards, the 2011 MTV Movie Award for best African film and best feature from the 2011 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles.

It was former President Mobutu Sese Seko who closed the door on the film industry in the country. He ruled Zaire with an iron fist from 1965 to 1997. “Mobutu didn’t like artists or films being made,” Munga said. “So he shut it down, and the few filmmakers that were there went abroad. At the time we could receive films — Westerns, kung fu film and a couple of French movies that were comedies.”

When the economy collapsed in the 1990s, said Munga, the churches took over the movie theaters.

Munga, whose father was a businessman and mother was a teacher, and his eight siblings were sent to boarding school in Belgium. “Mobutu wasn’t injecting money into education anymore,” Munga explained.

In 1993, one of his brothers suggested he try a cinema workshop in Belgium. Though Munga was a film buff, he was resistant about going into film. “As an African, you don’t think about becoming a director,” he said. “It was not common in those days.”

But he went to the workshop and wrote and directed a short film, which tied for the best in the class. The workshop success lead him to film school in Belgium. After he graduated four years later, Munga stayed in Belgium and “worked a little bit in the industry to get a sense of what it was like,” said Munga. “I would go home to Kinshasa and stay there until I ran out of money and then I would go back to Europe to work.” Eventually, he became a line producer in Kinshasa for documentary filmmakers from the BBC who had come to the Congo.

The idea for “Viva Riva!” had been percolating in his brain for seven years before he made the movie. “”The country is pretty free now in a sense there is no censorship,” he said. He got the money for the film from Canal Plus in France.

Munga hopes to open a film training center in Kinshasa. “It won’t be a film school in a traditional way. I would like to develop a permanent lab, a permanent workshop and invite filmmakers to interact with the students. The idea is to learn and to produce material.”

susan.king@latimes.com