COMEDY FUN
I want to break the stereotype of coloured people being only Afrikaans speaking, gangsters and have no teeth
eye on the diamonds, including local gangsters who regularly terrorise Lonnie. There’s a funny subplot revolving around a fence, who wants to lay his hands on a rare tropical fish.
The visual effects employed to create the fish are excellent and a great testimony to the talents available locally in our film industry. The film, shot on location in Woodstock and other areas in Cape Town, features great cinematography by Roscoe Vercueil, one of Kraak’s regular creative collaborators. Some jokes and scenes don’t work completely, but there are some very funny laugh out loud moments. For the most part it’s wonderfully cast.
Kraak explains his intentions in making the film: “I thought of the story some years back as a homage to the comedies I enjoyed as a teenager in the 1980s. When writer and actor Strini Pillai, who stays in Australia, came back to South Africa a few years ago, he was keen to get involved and collaborate on the screenplay as he too shared fond memories of that era. So we worked on the script together.”
As a teenager Kraak, a former resident of Penlyn Estate, Cape Town, used to frequent the Cine 400 cinema in Rylands Estate, close to his home. It is now a part of the Galaxy/West End complex and still an iconic entertainment feature on the Cape Flats landscape.
Here began his love for film and the introduction to many iconic productions. He started his career in entertainment after studying drama, and then going overseas to film school in London as the youngest director on the popular TV soapie, Generations.
He directed hundreds of episodes of the show and then moved on to the series Scandal as well as working on other TV shows like Binnelanders and This Life.
Kraak left the television industry to pursue his film projects and in 2014, released his debut filmVrou Soek Boer, which stars Lika Berning, Nico Panagio and Bok van Blerk. He then went on to produce Knysna, which was filmed in the town and directed by André Velts.
In 2015 he directed two films back-to-back, Sonskyn Beperk and his first English language film, Finders Keepers. The former was released in 2015 and the latter releases today.
Kraak is very vocal about the local film industry and the importance of films getting to be seen by the intended target audience. It is important that distributors be guided by film-makers as to the areas in which films should be screened and not simply paint all films of a certain style with the same brush, he says.
“Finders Keepers is a film with a strong coloured cast. I want to break the TV and film stereotype of coloured people being only Afrikaans-speaking, gangsters and have no teeth. We are a completely diverse community from an economic, religious and cultural perspective. These need to be showcased and celebrated on screen and our films can be enjoyed by a wider audience,” he adds.
Not wanting to remain stuck in a specific genre, Kraak is now breaking out of the Afrikaans RomCom style, which was prevalent in his first three films. He has many other films in various stages of development including a political period thriller, a horror movie, a family comedy and an adventure film. He is also developing relationships and projects with international production companies.
A dubbed Hindi-language version of Finders Keepers and one with the original English language soundtrack will be released in India shortly. His next film will be shot extensively in KwaZulu-Natal.