''Life, Above All'' is a 2010 South African
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...
directed by
Oliver Schmitz
Oliver Schmitz (born 1960) is a South African film director and screenwriter.
His film '' Mapantsula'' was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. His 2010 film '' Life, Above All'' was also screened in t ...
. It was screened in the
Un Certain Regard
(, meaning 'a certain glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob.
The section presents 20 films w ...
section of the
2010 Cannes Film Festival.
The film was selected as the South African entry for the
Best Foreign Language Film
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the
83rd Academy Awards and made the final shortlist announced in January 2011.
The film was adapted from the 2004 novel ''Chanda's Secrets'' by
Allan Stratton
Allan Stratton (born 1951) is a Canadian playwright and novelist.
Life and career
Stratton was born in Stratford, Ontario, and began his professional arts career while he was still in high school when James Reaney published his play ''The ...
.
Plot
Chanda, a poor 12-year-old South African girl who lives in a township near
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...
, must make funeral arrangements after her baby half-sister Sarah dies. Her mother Lillian, a seamstress, is paralyzed by grief and her alcoholic step-father Jonah by drink. Their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Tafa, helps care for Chanda's two younger half-siblings, Iris and Soly. Chanda is friends with Esther, an orphaned schoolmate who turns to prostitution to survive. At the end of the funeral, Jonah promises to support his family, but he later steals money from Lillian and runs away.
Mrs. Tafa takes an ailing Lillian to a quack doctor, but he is no help. After a drunken, emaciated Jonah is returned to Lillian by his sister, he again disappears, and rumors circulate that the family has
AIDS. A shaman tells Lillian that her house is bewitched, so she decides that she needs to go home to Tiro, the village where she grew up, and she bids a tearful farewell to her children. When a badly-beaten Esther turns up, Chanda takes her in and finds out that Esther may have contracted AIDS. Mrs. Tafa demands that Chanda force her to leave but Chanda refuses. Too distraught to take her exams, Chanda runs home and hears that her sister may have fallen into a deep hole along with another child, but Iris is only hiding, and the boy's fall is broken and his life saved by the body of Iris' dead father Jonah, which is extracted from the hole.
After Jonah's funeral, Mrs. Tafa warns Chanda not to tell anyone that she thinks her step-father had AIDS as people will say that her mother also suffers from the disease, whereupon Chanda announces that she will go to Tiro and bring Lillian back to the township. Esther gives Chanda money for the trip, but when Chanda arrives in Tiro, her grandmother tells her that Lillian's AIDS is a punishment from God and that she was sent away. Chanda tracks down her mother, who is dying alone under a tree, and hires an ambulance to carry them home. There, neighbors threaten to stone Chanda for bringing a curse on the township, but Mrs. Tafa defend her and asks the neighbors to pray for Lillian. At Lillian's death bed, Mrs. Tafa begs Chanda to forgive her for trying to protect her from shame and confesses that her late son also had AIDS. The neighbors sing for Lillian as she dies.
Cast
* Khomotso Manyaka as Chanda Kabelo
* Keaobaka Makanyane as Esther Macholo
* Harriet Lenabe as Mrs. Tafa (as Harriet Manamela)
* Lerato Mvelase as Lillian
* Tinah Mnumzana as Aunt Lizbet
*
Aubrey Poolo as Jonah
* Mapaseka Mathebe as Iris
* Thato Kgaladi as Soly
* Kgomotso Ditshweni as Dudu
* Rami Chuene as Aunty Ruth
Reception
The film received positive reviews from film critics. Review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
reports that 82% out of 71 professional critics gave the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.02/10.
Life, Above All
''Rotten Tomatoes''. Flixster
Flixster is an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies, currently owned by parent company Fandango. The formerly independent site, allows users ...
. Retrieved 13 January 2013. In his review, Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, stating that it "earns the tears it inspires. The film is about deep human emotions, evoked with sympathy and love." He praised the young actors as "remarkable": "Manyaka and Makanyane have grave self-possession; they never even slightly overact."
See also
* Cinema of South Africa
The cinema of South Africa refers to the films and film industry of the nation of South Africa. Many foreign films have been produced about South Africa (usually involving race relations).
The first South African film to achieve international ...
*
*
References
External links
*
*
2010 films
2010 drama films
Films based on Canadian novels
Films directed by Oliver Schmitz
HIV/AIDS in film
Northern Sotho-language films
South African drama films
Sony Pictures Classics films
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