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 South African film Promised land is directed by Jason Xenopolous Promised Land is a hit South Africa arrived at FESPACO with a bang. Promised Land, directed by Jason Xenopolous, is the story of an Afrikaner community holding on to its land at any cost. The story is based on a novel by Karel Schoeman. Its central location is an eerie run run-down farm. The characters make up a family held together by a collective secret. But the central character, George, who arrives from London to visit his ancestral home upsets their uneasy equilibrium. George gets lost on his way to the farm where he spent his childhood, and finds himself an unwilling guest of sinister neighbours. “Its a film that makes you laugh and then it makes you want to cry because you wonder why people would even behave like this” was the view of one viewer after a showing in Ouagadougou. The behaviour in question is the brutality and bullying born of a conviction that this Afrikaner community has a God given right to the land. Director Jason Xenopoulus washes colour from the film and presents it to us through a sepia lens - like old, faded photographs reeking of a past era. Promised Land is not only South Africa’s first ever full length feature in competition at FESPACO but it is also Xenopolous’s first feature film. The film was also screened at the Toronto film festival last year and whether it wins an award or not in Ouagadougou it certainly goes with a bang. The climax of the film is an engagement party, which is actually an alibi for the bigger plot of blowing up the land re-allocation office. The tension that has built can only end in violence and it does in a volley of bullets. |
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