African FILM FESTIVAL New Zealand

Synopsis

Opening film of Berlin Panorama Section, selected for Toronto IFF

Natalie, her beloved horse Oumie and best friend Poppy (heavily pregnant) are on the run in the desert Karoo region after a killing on Natalie’s wedding night. At the same time police officer Beauty, with her own parallel story to tell, is setting out to catch them. They have decided on distant Johannesburg as their destination, but the chances of arriving seem slim. The three women are each trapped by their heritage and circumstances – whether and how they can escape is the question we will discover the answer to. Their flight and adventures on the road are action-packed drama, but they also offer a glimpse of apartheid’s afterlife in one of the underbellies of modern South Africa: a poor, rural Afrikaans region. Here, racism is alive and well, complex, daily and charged; in addition, gender politics are entwined with race and are no less complex. The film has been described as a neo-noir-Western-meets-feminist road movie and it is truly a wild ride peopled with desperate characters, but multi-award-winning director, Jenna Bass, has gone for honesty and realism to fulfill the aim of her work, which is the healing of her country’s wounds: “In acknowledging the pain, there comes a kind of healing. You’re letting it out and being heard for the first time.”