The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) announced at the weekend on its Twitter page that the feature film, Sew The Winter To My Skin, has been nominated as South Africa’s submission for the foreign-language Oscar race.
Set in South Africa’s rural Great-Karoo region in the 1950’s, not long after the all-white National Party took power and apartheid became an entrenched system, the Jahmil Qubeka directed film chronicles life of John Kepe, who eluded authorities in South Africa’s rugged Boschberg Mountains for 12 years as he stole from wealthy white settler farmers and gave to the black poor. Exploring the effects of the colonial displacement that sewed the seeds for one of the most viciously racist political regimes in history, his exploits made him a folk hero to his own people nonetheless and a public enemy in the eyes of the apartheid government.
Hot on the heels of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival early this month, Sew The Winter To My Skin has been chosen as the opening film at the Cape Town International Film Market & Festival at the Artscape Theatre on October 9. A co-production between South Africa and Germany, it stars Ezra Mabengeza, Kandyse McClure, Peter Kurt and Brenda Ngxoli.
