The Chinese march across Africa is halted in the face of local workers on a road building site in the Congo. The vast wilderness of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a world away from the urban centers of China. Yet it is there that greater numbers of Chinese engineers are doing business. In the documentary "Empire of Dust", director Bram Van Paesschen explores the fraught relationship between the Congolese and the Chinese, as shown through their efforts to build a road between two major cities in the DRC, wryly observed with humorous interstitials from a Congolese radio DJ invented by Van Paesschen himself.
In 2007, China and Congo signed a massive resources-for-infrastructure deal with projected revenues of S40-S120 billion. China endeavors to take on a wide range of development projects (including roads, hospitals, schools and airports) to be paid for by Congo's immense copper and cobalt reserves. Though a promising deal for the Congolese– the majority of whom live on less than S1.25 a day– the deal's lack of transparency has made it the subject of scrutiny for human rights organizations."Empire of Dust" is a day-by-day account of globalization at work, and examines the human aspect of this exchange.
The Chinese Railway Engineering Company has descended upon the Democratic Republic of the Congo to restore the road - covering 300km - between Kolwezi and Lubumbashi. As Head of Logistics, Loa Yan is responsible for the equipment, building materials and food (mainly chickens) to arrive in the isolated Chinese prefab camp. His interpreter is a Mandarin-speaking Congolese named Eddy. The Congolese government was supposed to deliver these things but so far the team hasn't received anything. This means that the Chinese are forced to deal with dodgy local companies, all of which have their own agendas and ways of working. The film follows this illustrious duo through the never-ending process of absurd negotiations. It is not only the language barrier that complicates things; the cultural differences in particular make any kind of cooperation almost impossible. What follows is an endless, harsh, but absurdly funny roller coaster of negotiations and misunderstandings, as Lao Yan learns about the Congolese way of making deals.

Directed by Bram van Paesschen ; A Savage Film Production with VAF, Flanders Image, Eyeworks, IVC Group and RTBF