“Told with the pared-down simplicity of an African folktale… this plaintive story of an afflicted mother's urge to secure a better future for her daughter is a deeply affecting humanist drama that addresses AIDS with gentle eloquence.” — Variety
Screened as part of NZIFF 2005
Yesterday 2004
“Told with the pared-down simplicity of an African folktale, a lilting rhythm and an almost ethnographic directness, this plaintive story of an afflicted mother’s urge to secure a better future for her daughter is a deeply affecting humanist drama that addresses AIDS with gentle eloquence… Shot mainly in the parched landscapes of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa, the story of dignity and endurance in the face of abject suffering and deprivation could easily have become a bleedingheart treatise. Instead, director Darrell James Roodt has crafted an unsentimental drama with as much poetic as emotional force. The project is the first international production shot in the Zulu language. Michael Brierley’s graceful camerawork ably harnesses the dusty beauty and forbidding expanses of the landscape to provide an imposing frame… Mandala Kunene’s score and haunting African vocals add considerably to the film’s melancholy spell, movingly incarnated in the beautiful, sad features of actress Khumalo in the title role.” — David Rooney, Variety