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NEWS Productions 

To Watch on the Big Screen in May

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Barakat will be released at cinemas nationwide on Wednesday May 13 and Thursday May 14. It has already received multiple international awards, including one for Best Narrative at the 23rd Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Festival in America. It also bagged the Best International Feature Film, Best Ensemble Cast, Best Supporting Actor, Mary Austin Award for Excellence in Directing, and runner up for Best Original Score at the Idyllwild Film Festival in Los Angeles, America. The film tells the story of an ageing matriarch, who aims to bring together her dysfunctional family at Eid-al-Fitr, as well as to break the news to her four sons about her new love – two years after her husband’s death. Barakat is written and directed by Amy Jephta and Ephraim Gordon – Gordon also produced the film.

 

On May 14th 2021, Netflix will premiere I Am All Girls, a chilling film about a global child sex trafficking syndicate operating in South Africa. Bringing this mystery-thriller produced by Nthibah Pictures to life is South African actresses Hlubi Mboya (Isidingo, Rhythm City) in the lead role as ‘Ntombizonke’, a troubled but powerful detective with a dark, ugly secret and Erica Wessels (Warrior and Waterfront, Vloekstte) who plays her unlikely confidant and emotionally-troubled colleague, ‘Jodie Synman’. Donovan Marsh directs the film, which is set against the tense dying days of Apartheid, based on real events that unfolded in South Africa in the 1980s. Producers are Simon Swart, Wayne Fitzjohn, Jozua Malherbe and Lucia Mayer-Marais. Watch the trailer.
 

Last year This Is Not a Burial, it’s a Resurrection swept the Africa Movie Academy directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, produced by Cait Pansegrouw and Elias Ribeiro, with Mary Twala Mhlongo in the lead. The arthouse film about an elderly woman who, in the wake of losing her son, begins to prepare for her own funeral, is textured with lush mountainous landscapes and propelled by elegiac dialogue. This feature film shot in Lesotho was the small landlocked country’s first submission to the Oscars in the category of Best International Feature Film. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection will arrive in local cinemas on 21 May. Watch the trailer