Tsotsi

South Africa 2005, 94 minutes
Dir. Gavin Hood
In English with Zulu, Afrikaans subtitles
Rating: [M]
Genres: Foreign Cinema, Drama, Suspense/Crime / Gangsters, Youth

Topics: Indigenous & Minority Cultures.

Feat. Presley Chweneyagae

Aroview: Deserved winner of the 2006 Foreign Language Oscar, this gripping tale of a young homicidal street-thug ('tsotsi') in post-apartheid South Africa who stumbles onto a slender possibility of redemption, boasts luminous performances along with the gritty veracity of its Johannesburg shanty-town locations.

Leading his gang through a series of casually-violent crimes, babyfaced Chweneyagae one day finds himself with more than he bargained for after car-jacking a BMW and discovering a hungry infant in the back seat. Attempting, disastrously, to care for the child he forces a neighbour - at gunpoint - to help out, producing a raft of conflicting feelings of confusion and guilt about his own childhood of parental neglect and abuse. Right up to its teeth-gritting finale, this manages to bypass most of the potential cliches with its passionate storytelling. Adapted from the novel by Athol Fugard, "Boesman and Lena".