Africa’s top films scoop prizes
TWO South African films and one from Mozambique were awarded the prizes at the closing ceremony of the inaugural Johannesburg Film Festival in Rosebank last night.
Judges awarded prizes for the best African, best South African and overall best film of the festival.
Twelve of the 60 films screened over the nine days of the festival were in competition.
The judging panel was made up of actress and producer Terry Pheto, Cameroonian filmmaker and photographer Osvalde Lewat, filmmaker and regional secretary of the Federation of Pan African Filmmakers Asha Lovelace and South African theatre and TV writer and director Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom.
The R100 000 award for best South African film went to Rehad Desai for his documentary The Giant is Falling.
The film, which had sold-out screenings, examines the decline of the ANC from the Marikana massacre to the local government elections and the #FeesMustFall movement.
The film “picks at the festering sore of inequality that is making the status quo untenable”, said the judges.
The R100 000 prize for best African film also went to a South African film. Director Zola Maseko’s adaptation of Zakes Mda’s novel The Whale Caller — a bittersweet romance set in Hermanus and starring Sello Maake ka Ncube — had its world premiere at the festival. It took almost a decade to complete and has an all-South African cast and production team.
The R150 000 overall best film award was scooped by the Mozambican civil war drama The Train of Salt and Sugar, which tells the story of passengers on a train to Malawi.
Directed by Brazil-born Licinio Azevedo, who has been making films in Mozambique since 1980, the film was well received by audiences and critics for its mix of fable and history and its strong performances.
The judges also made special mention of The Wedding Ring, a drama directed by Rahmatou Keïta from Niger.
The festival ended with the screening of controversial American director Nate Parker’s Sundance Festival winner Birth of a Nation, based on Nat Turner’s slave rebellion.