SUN RISES ON A BRIGHT NEW TALENT IN SA FILM
Phumi Morare’s ‘Lakutshon’ Ilanga’ (When the Sun Sets) has been shortlisted in the live action short film category at this year’s Academy Awards.
Oscar season is upon us, ready to usher in the intricacies of the 94th Academy Awards as they play out in the court of public opinion: this year’s nominations, the winners, and whether enough was done in the name of diversity. So far at least, South Africans have cause to be hopeful. For local scriptwriter and director Phumi Morare, the 2022 Academy Awards kicked off with a promising start in December when she learnt that her short film Lakutshon’ Ilanga (When the Sun Sets) had been selected as one of the 15 shortlisted films in the live action short film category.
The 34-year-old’s work has been shown at international film festivals, and she received a Bafta nomination and won the 2021 HBO Short Film Competition for Lakutshon’ Ilanga before winning a gold medal at the 2021 Student Academy Awards — essentially the Oscars for student films. This triggered the film’s eligibility to be submitted for consideration for the 2022 Academy Awards.
The film is set in 1980s apartheid SA and was inspired by her mother’s personal experience. It follows a young black nurse (played by Zikhona Bali) who must find her brother — a young activist — when he goes missing after school one day.
“I was really curious about this story that my mom had told me about saving her brother and confronting aggressive apartheid police as a black woman,” Morare says. “It made me think about how she got to that place where in her society she probably wouldn’t have had a voice and she was somehow able to find it and use it. I thought that was very powerful and inspiring.”
The film takes its title from the Miriam Makeba song of the same name, the mournful lament of someone waiting for a loved one who disappeared during the apartheid years. Despite working on a student budget, they secured the rights to use the song and title from the Miriam Makeba Trust.
What is striking about the film is not only Morare’s raw portrayal of her mother’s lived experience but her keen awareness of the social and political climate of the time. The film is skilfully executed and deeply poignant, painting a vivid picture of the injustices South Africans lived under.
Morare says she also infused a bit of her grandmother, who was a nurse, into the story, as well as a bit of herself, as she wrote the film at a time when she was trying to find her voice as a writer.
For her it was undoubtedly a personal undertaking. She says the reason she really cares about the film is because it’s about a black woman transcending the oppressive situation she lived in.
“I wanted the film to give us a sense of hope. Although we know the struggle continues, we also know that there’s light at the end of tunnel and that we’ll eventually overcome.”
FROM FINANCE TO FILM
After matriculating, Morare completed a bachelor’s degree in business and finance at the University of Cape Town before starting her career in investment banking in London.
“I went to boarding school in Pietermaritzburg and that’s where I first fell in love with film. I did this class in one of my English literature classes where we were studying film for a little bit. We watched The Shawshank Redemption and that’s where I fell in love with filmmaking.”
At the time, Morare didn’t know anyone working in the arts or film industry and, because she was gifted in maths, her family encouraged her to pursue a career in business or finance, something she says stimulated the left side of her brain. “[It was] completely different to what I felt in my heart I wanted to do in high school, but still a lot of fun.”
But she never managed to shake her love for filmmaking.
“I think I was three years into my course when I felt I needed to rethink the meaning of life and what I wanted to do with mine,” Morare says. “I decided I wanted to be in film and to find a way to somehow make it in the industry.”
She moved back to SA and started working for McKinsey on an externship, or experiential learning opportunity basis, which allowed her to continue working while gaining experience at a production company. Eventually, she left the corporate world to pursue filmmaking full-time.
“I wanted to write and direct and not just be on the producing side. So my boss allowed me to shoot two short films while I was working with him. Consequently, I decided to go to film school.”
This decision led Morare to apply to master’s programmes in the UK and US, where she was accepted for a master of fine arts in film directing at Chapman University’s Dodge College in California.
In March 2020 she shot Lakutshon’ Ilanga on location in Soweto as the thesis for her degree, before graduating later that year.
LOOKING FORWARD
The past few years have seen a slow transformation in the Academy Awards as they’ve started opening up to those in the industry outside the US and UK, a change that has recently been reflected in a more diverse list of nominations and, slowly but surely, winners.
“I think that some progress is being made,” Morare says. “When you look at the
new academy members that have been invited to join over the last few years there’s been a lot of improvement in terms of the diversity of people that are invited and also the kinds of films that [are nominated]. I can’t speak to everything but I’ve personally seen an improvement.”
Last year nine out of 20 acting nominations went to people of colour — the highest number yet in the history of the Oscars. It was also the first time two women were nominated in the best director category and the first time it went to a woman of colour — Chloé Zhao, for her film Nomad.
Regardless of the outcome for Morare at this year’s Academy Awards, she hopes to continue making films about women, Africans and ordinary heroes.
“I like films that explore characters that are trying to find their voice or characters that are overcoming insurmountable odds — I’m drawn to those kinds of stories. So I hope my future work will be in that realm as well.”
Morare is currently working on a new short film that she’ll be shooting in SA this year, as well as her first feature film.
She will continue working in the US, but she sees herself spending time between Los Angeles — which offers great networking opportunities — and SA.
“I love SA. All my work — especially the work I write — is birthed from stories from home,” she says. “Home is where my heart is, it’s where my stories are. So I want to make sure that I spend a lot of time at home as well.”
The nominations for this year’s
Academy Awards will be announced on February 8 and the ceremony will take place on March 27.