Matthias De Groof
Matthias De Groof is a Belgian award-winning filmmaker and professor in Film Studies and Visual Cultures, specializing in de/postcolonial film theory, African cinema and the DRCongo where he lived, worked and held numerous research stays. Matthias holds MA’s in philosophy (KU Leuven), international relations (UC Louvain), and cinema studies (UAntwerp). After his PhD, Matthias has held prestigious research fellowships at institutions such as the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (Fulbright / BAEF), the University of Bayreuth’s Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, the Waseda University in Tokyo (CANON Foundation); the University of Antwerp (Research Foundation Flanders); the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (KONE); and the Amsterdam University as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher.
He has taught a range of courses—including World Cinema, Aesthetics, Curating & Exhibiting, Documentary Theory, Film Criticism, and Script Writing. Matthias has lectured internationally (EHESS, Paris1-Panthéon/Sorbonne, Humboldt) and authored numerous publications in leading journals such as Interventions, Third Text, and Imaginations. His edited book, Lumumba in the Arts (Leuven University Press), was listed among LitHub’s top 100 “books to escape the news.” Beyond academia, he is frequently invited to speak in cultural settings (Bozar, Klara), curate film programs (MuZee, NOVA), and write for magazines including MO, Rekto, and l’Art Même. As a filmmaker, Matthias’s works—produced by Cobra Films—include Tantalum (2026), Under The White Mask (2020), Palimpsest of the Africa Museum (2019), Lobi Kuna (2018) and Diorama (2018). His award-winning films have screened internationally, including at the Berlinale, Sheffield, DocLisboa and IFFR, and have been curated by outlets like The New York Times’ Op-Docs Channel, FilmScalpel’s Best Practices video-essay channel, VOD platforms (Dalton, Arts.Film, AVA-Library, Rai Film, Kanopy, and catalogues (centre du film sur l'art, Kinorebelde).
List of recent publications:
De Groof, M., & Katondolo, P. 2025. Mediating Africa today through the cinema of Yole!Africa. Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism.
De Groof, M. 2024. Science fiction and masquerade in Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Les Saignantes: A cinematic way out of Africa’s declining future. Journal of African Cinemas, 16(1).
De Groof, M. 2022. Anticolonial aesthetics: Towards eco-cinema.
Interventions: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 24(7), 1142–1160.
De Groof, M. (ed.). 2020. Lumumba in the Arts. Leuven University Press.
De Groof, M. 2019. Palimpsest of the Africa Museum, CobraFilms, Atelier Graphoui, Belgium, 69’.
De Groof, M. 2026. “From imagined indigenous/autochthonous communities to reimagined worlds: Video-advocacy in the DRC” in: Alessandro Jedlowski and Irene Bono (eds.) Nation on Demand: Imagined Sovereignties in African Cultural Industries, Oxford University Press.
De Groof, M and Alessandro Jedlowski. 2019. “Congolese Cinema Today:
Memories of the Present in Kinshasa’s New Wave Cinema (2008-2018).”
Francofonia: Studi E Ricerche Sulle Letterature Di Lingua Francese. - Bologna, vol. 76, pp. 117-135.
De Groof, M. 2022. From Leopold III’s master of the jungle to contemporary Congolese eco-cinema: Postcolonial resonance. In P.-P. Fraiture (Ed.), Unfinished histories: Empire and postcolonial resonance in Central Africa and Belgium (pp. 337–358). Leuven University Press.
De Groof, M. 2020. CONGOCENE: Congolese cinema in / on / against the Anthropocene. In M. Gržinić & S. Uitz (Eds.), Rethinking the past for a new future of conviviality: Opposing colonialism, anti-Semitism, turbo-nationalism (pp. 88–109). Cambridge Scholars Publishing De Groof, M. 2012. Intriguing African storytelling. In L. Khatib (Ed.), Storytelling in world cinemas: Narrative forms and contexts (pp. 115–134).
Wallflower Press