This "Shooting Diary" gives an account of the experience planned and lived out by Thierry Michel and his crew in his desire to go up the course of the Congo River from its mouth to the source, a 4,371 km journey of which 1,750 are navigable.

In order to give us an idea of it, he illustrates beforehand the unbelievable difficulties encountered in Kinshasa for getting all the required "sesames": a few dozen authorisations and several hundred official signatures! When the day of departure came, the crew went aboard a huge barge, a real Noah's Arc, a traveling village, for a journey of a totally undetermined duration with the desire to share the daily life of the passengers in every respect. On the menu were beetles, caterpillars and fish from the river. For desert, during the stops at the villages situated along the river, were more hassles and hesitations from local authorities to be allowed to shoot: never-ending discussions and unavoidable bribes.