Director
Lafras Verwey (58) has worked as a clerk in the Civil Service in Pretoria for thirty years. By day he sorts files and whiles away the mundane hours writing grandiose propaganda speeches and drilling imaginary platoons in the washroom, but unbeknownst to his colleagues he is also a clandestine parcel courier for a secret organization that recruited his services to complete their covert mission.
Writer
Die Wonderwerker tells the story of Eugène Marais, a famous Afrikaans writer, poet and researcher. The story focuses on the few months he spends on the Van Rooyen's farm, where he falls in love with the 19-year-old Jane Brayshaw.
Director
She was loved, she was a princess, heir to the throne - but the childhood fairytale turned to lifelong nightmare for Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's first child. When Henry divorced her mother and married Anne Boleyn, Mary became an outcast and a threat to the Protestant succession. By a twist of fate, on the death of her brother, she became queen at last in 1553, but her attempts to make England Catholic again were a disaster for her and the country. History has called her "Bloody Mary" for the burning of the Protestants, but how fair is this? This film paints another picture, of a woman true to her beliefs, pushed towards a terrible psychological disintegration.
Executive Producer
She was loved, she was a princess, heir to the throne - but the childhood fairytale turned to lifelong nightmare for Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's first child. When Henry divorced her mother and married Anne Boleyn, Mary became an outcast and a threat to the Protestant succession. By a twist of fate, on the death of her brother, she became queen at last in 1553, but her attempts to make England Catholic again were a disaster for her and the country. History has called her "Bloody Mary" for the burning of the Protestants, but how fair is this? This film paints another picture, of a woman true to her beliefs, pushed towards a terrible psychological disintegration.
Writer
The greatest feature to emerge thus far from South Africa (since 1994) is Katinka Heyns's Paljas. The narrative occurs in the 1960s, when poverty amongst Afrikaners was a serious problem and the South African Railway a key mechanism in Afrikaner affirmative action. This excellent Afrikaans language drama follows the deterioration of an Afrikaner family isolated and shunned in the small community of Toorwater. Nothing seems to happen. Then a circus train loses its way and comes to rest in Toorwater, and a mysterious clown brings fresh magic to the stagnating family, but he also poses a threat to the rest of the community. Heyns brilliantly succeeds in creating a metaphor for the Afrikaner family's turbulent emotional, cultural and ideological journey from the darkness of apartheid back into the light of post-apartheid reconciliation (famililial, cultural and political).
Script
The acclaimed drama based on Dalene Matthee´s award-winning novel. "Fiela se Kind" (Fiela's Child) is the story of a white foundling boy that is raised by a brown family. But the childs life changes irrevocably when white census officials discover him living across the established borders of society, and he is removed from his foster parents. "This is the moving story about a close family being torn apart by the social convictions of the day. It is the story of a mother´s enduring love and hope to see her taken son again. Fiela is a down to earth woman farmer who does not let anyone step on her. She raised a white castaway child, Benjamin, and teaches him the simple things in life."
