Emmanuel Kabongo

Emmanuel Kabongo (born December 25, 1986) is a Canadian actor and producer. Born and raised in Zaire, now present day Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kabongo immigrated to Canada and began his acting career as an extra before achieving recognition for his performance as the lead protagonist in the Toronto-based web series Teenagers (2014–2017), for which he earned his first Canadian Screen Award nomination in 2016. Kabongo also co-produced Teenagers.

In the 1990s, Kabongo immigrated to Toronto with his family. Kabongo's father often worked as an extra, which exposed Kabongo to show business at a young age. Kabongo also struggled with scoliosis in his youth. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and received generally positive reviews. He completed an actor's residency at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre in 2015. In 2014, Kabongo portrayed a gladiator in Paul W. S. Anderson's romantic historical disaster film Pompeii. The film won the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's Golden Screen Award for 2014 as the year's top-grossing Canadian film.

Throughout the 2010s and 2020s, Kabongo guest-starred in a variety of television programs, including Call Me Fitz (2012), Murdoch Mysteries (2013), Rookie Blue (2013–2014), Quantico (2015), Taken (2018), Departure (2019), Ransom (2019), Hudson & Rex (2019), NCIS: Hawaiʻi (2022), and Outer Banks (2023), among others. Louis Chunovic of Playback published a piece on the series, writing that "the young creators of Teenagers had to have plenty of luck, pluck, talent, and grit to get this far. And that portends a Hollywood ending". Kabongo also starred as the lead male protagonist in the series. Teenagers received positive reviews from critics and was frequently compared to the Degrassi franchise and the UK television series Skins. The series amassed millions of views on YouTube over the course of three seasons. For his performance in the second season of Teenagers, Kabongo earned his first Canadian Screen Award nomination in 2016.

In 2016, Kabongo produced and starred in A Man's Story, a short film for which he received funding from bravoFACT. The short film premiered at the ReelWorld Film Festival. That year, he also played a supporting role in Antibirth, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released on September 2, 2016, in the U.S., by IFC Midnight.

In September 2016, CBC announced it had commissioned a one-hour drama series that follows the star players of an under-21 soccer academy in Montreal, titled 21 Thunder, with Kabongo slated to star as one of the lead characters, an Ivory Coast mid-fielder named Junior Lolo. The series premiered in Canada on July 31, 2017, to generally positive reviews. Also that year, Kabongo appeared in three episodes of the CBC series Frankie Drake Mysteries as a boxer named Moses, and he starred opposite Mouna Traoré in Brown Girl Begins, a post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Sharon Lewis. thumb alt=In 2020, he starred in an episode of the CBS All Access series Star Trek: Discovery as V’Kir. That year, he also played a supporting role in the Canadian political comedy film Québexit, which premiered at the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival in September 2020.

Kabongo received a second Canadian Screen Award nomination in 2022, for his leading performance in the television film Death She Wrote. He received a third nomination in 2023 for this supporting performance in the web series Chateau Laurier. He won several other awards for his performance in Chateau Laurier at web series festivals.

In 2022, he was cast in April Mullen’s sci-fi thriller, Hello Stranger. That film, later retitled Simulant, was released theatrically in Canada by Mongrel Media on April 7, 2023. Kabongo was featured in the film alongside a cast that included Sam Worthington and Simu Liu. Kabongo described the film as a "wild rollercoaster." The film premiered at the 2024 Pan African Film Festival in the U.S., and held its Canadian premiere the following week at the 2024 Toronto Black Film Festival with two sold out screenings. It also screened in the Borsos Competition program at the 2024 Whistler Film Festival.

Influences Kabongo found early acting inspiration in action films from the 1990s that his mother showed him as a child. In an interview with CBC Arts, Kabongo said that "taking acting serious came from watching how my mom reacted to films of the '90s ... [She] loves Denzel, Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone... My mom watched all those movies growing up, and knowing how that made her feel, I just wanted to do the same thing for her." In an interview with Harry Rosen, he said that "it’s important to me as a Black man to stand up for what is right, supporting the cause against police brutality." Outstanding Drama Series Teenagers|-

Self

2015 Self

Reelworld Film Festival Impact Award A Man's Story| 4th Canadian Screen Awards Best Performance in a Program or Series Produced for Digital Media

|International Academy of Web Television Best Male Performance – Drama AfroGlobal Television Excellence Awards Rising Star Award

2019 ReelWorld Film Festival Trailblazer Award 2022 10th Canadian Screen Awards Lead Actor, Television Film or Miniseries

2023 11th Canadian Screen Awards Supporting Performance, Web Program or Series Chateau Laurier''

Filmography

Film

Television