Local is lekker in Canada

TWO homegrown movies – Keeping up with the Kandasamys and The Number – have been selected to feature in film festivals in Canada.

Keeping up with the Kandasamys – a box office hit in South Africa – was recently showcased at the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival.

Shot in Chatsworth‚ Durban‚ the movie raked in more than R16million in earnings.

The KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission (KZNFC) announced on Friday that The Number – directed by award-winning director Khalo Matabane of State of Violence and Nelson Mandela: The Myth and Me fame – made the list of movies to be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. It will feature in the Contemporary World Cinema section.

Shot on location at Durban’s Clairwood Hospital – which was partly converted into a prison – the gritty film is based on the novel by award-winning writer Johnny Steinberg on former Cape Flats leader of the notorious 28’s prison gang Magadien Wentzel.

According to production company Born Free Media: “A young inmate’s murder confirms Magadien’s misgivings about his life inside‚ so he decides to join a reformminded warden’s efforts to improve the prison‚ eyeing it as a path to early release.”

“With the film being screened internationally‚ this will go a long way in establishing KwaZulu-Natal as a choice film destination‚” KZNFC head Carol Coetzee said. — DDC