To be announced – We love this film but the work to organise its screening is still in progress.
Set in Mitchell’s Plain one of Cape Town’s slums this intense spectacular social realist drama follows a mother Shirley Adams who struggles to rehabilitate her paralysed son Donovan, a victim of gun violence that left him paralysed from the neck down. Her husband has abandoned her leaving her to give up her work spending all her time caring for her son. With no income to support herself and her son she has resigned to surviving by handouts from her neighbours and by shoplifting occasionally. The power of this narrative lies in the choices, style and characterisation the debutant director Oliver Hermanus deploys in crafting this story. The emphasis is on the use of a hand held camera, which is kept very close to the face or behind the head of the protagonist who as Shirley Adams is excellently played by Denis Newman. Hermaus allows only momentary glimpses of the environment in which Shirley and her son inhabit and that you are in country that is still trying to come to terms with the challenges of race, class poverty and crime. This enables us to keep an unbroken intimacy with what is an insightful, heart warming and outstanding film.
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Writer: Stavros Pamballis, Oliver Hermanus
Cast: Denise Newman, Keenan Arrison
Country: South Africa-USA-UK
Year: 2009
Runtime: 92 min
