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Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon

A scene from Conversations on A Sunday Afternoon


Keniloe is a tormented young poet desperately trying to make sense of the world. He spends his Sundays in a park in Hillbrow, and meets Fatima, a Somali refugee who tells him the heartbreaking circumstances of her arrival in South Africa. Disturbed, Keniloe decides to use Fatima's experience as the basis for a book he wants to write about the plight of refugees and the effects of war and displacement. When he returns to the park to speak to her again, he finds that she has disappeared. Determined to find her, Keniloe sets off on a journey that brings him into contact with a wide range of characters who have all experienced displacement as a result of circumstance or ideological differences and whose stories profoundly affect him. "A fascinating contribution to the rich global trend of blending documentary and fiction, Khalo Matabane's film gathers a book's worth of accounts of exiles, ranging from a Montenegro woman who fled bombing in Bosnia, to a former Congo presidential guardsman who survived a machete attack. Some are more or less rooted in Johannesburg; others never seem to lose their sense of being in exile. No conclusions are drawn except that the city has become a haven for refugees from the world's war-ravaged zones.

Dir Khalo Matabane South Africa 2005/ 80 mins

A scene from Conversations on A Sunday Afternoon