It’s 1994 and young Dudu and Duke have little in the way of inspiring role models to build lives for themselves in Mdantsane, South Africa. Apartheid is over and Nelson Mandela is president, but they’re taking notes from a father (Zolosa Xaluva’s Art Nyakama) raving about how “real men” take care of their family despite cheating on his wife with teenagers and barely knowing what his sons are doing or where they are at any moment. What he means by “protection” is the willingness to steal, cheat, and kill—to prove himself better than the next man trying to follow the law or daring to interfere with what he has ownership over. When escape is only possible through the boxing ring, jail, or death, possessions become identity.
Nobody should then be surprised about where these boys find themselves in 2019 as two halves of the same chip off the old block.
Nobody should then be surprised about where these boys find themselves in 2019 as two halves of the same chip off the old block.
- 9/8/2019
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
A teacher-pupil affair spirals into sexual obsession and violence in this edge-of-the-seat thriller from Jahmil Xt Qubeka
The London film festival has presented me with an exciting discovery this year: the South African film-maker Jahmil Xt Qubeka, who brings some scalding steam-heat with a sensational noir thriller in black and white called Of Good Report. (It is actually his third feature, following two previous films, uMalusi and A Small Town Called Descent, which have yet to show up on IMDb.) Watching this brazenly shocking and gripping film, I remembered the feeling I had on seeing Christopher Nolan's low-budget black-and-white debut, Following. Here is a director who is going places.
The drama concerns a shy, spindly, bespectacled young man called Parker Sithole, played by Mothusi Magano. He has an enigmatic, stricken look – like Jack Nance in Eraserhead or Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Parker is new in town, having turned up...
The London film festival has presented me with an exciting discovery this year: the South African film-maker Jahmil Xt Qubeka, who brings some scalding steam-heat with a sensational noir thriller in black and white called Of Good Report. (It is actually his third feature, following two previous films, uMalusi and A Small Town Called Descent, which have yet to show up on IMDb.) Watching this brazenly shocking and gripping film, I remembered the feeling I had on seeing Christopher Nolan's low-budget black-and-white debut, Following. Here is a director who is going places.
The drama concerns a shy, spindly, bespectacled young man called Parker Sithole, played by Mothusi Magano. He has an enigmatic, stricken look – like Jack Nance in Eraserhead or Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Parker is new in town, having turned up...
- 10/14/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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