Thought-provoking doccies on offer at DIFF

DOCUMENTARIES submitted from around the world will feature at the 43rd Durban International Film Festival (DIFF), which is set to take place from July 21 to 30.

Twenty carefully curated featurelength documentaries, of which six will be live screening at Suncoast CineCentre, will feature in this year’s line-up.

From the heart of a glacier in the Italian Alps in N-Ice Cello to the evening skies of Beirut in Kash Kash, there is something for everyone.

Here’s a list of international doccies to catch at this year’s DIFF.

Wind Blows in the Border This looks at a fight for ancestral lands. It is directed by Laura Faerman and Marina Weis.

Adam & Ida

Directed by Jan Tenhavn, it tells the story of Polish-Jewish twins who survived the Holocaust.

Portraits of the Future

Virna Molina was shooting a film about the resistance of the subway delegates in Buenos Aires, but the lockdown interrupted it and several protagonists of the film died from Covid-19. The stopped project is now an existential, philosophical and human essay on the new “normality” that affects us.

Batata

This was shot over an unparalleled 10 years as Syrian-Lebanese director Noura Kevorkian’s camera follows the plight of Maria and her family of Syrian migrant workers who find themselves unable to return to their hometown of Raqqa Syria.

Unique among the numerous refugee stories to date, Batata captures an entire decade while documenting not just the age-old conflict between two nations, but the unbending spirit of a woman who puts family ahead of all else.

Forgotten Dreams

Directed by Marwa El Sharkawy from Egypt, it follows the life of a young, talented, colloquial poet who discovers he has kidney failure. Music Is My Life

This tells the story of the late Joseph Shabalala, including his rise to international fame with his band Ladysmith Black Mambazo in the wake of their contributions to Paul Simon’s massively successful Graceland album.

Bathed in Ladysmith’s powerful and deeply beautiful music, the documentary covers the breadth of the singer’s life, from his early years in rural South Africa to the height of Shabalala’s global success to his passing in 2020 at the age of 79.

Sonny Boy – the making of a sound man

Sonny Boy tells his own life story, being a bi-racial boy, from his humble beginnings in rural KwaZulu-Natal as an orphan, to his unlikely rise as a successful sound engineer on the world stage.

No U-Turn

Directed by Nollywood film-maker Ike Nnabue, this goes back to the path he took at the dawn of his adult life when he wanted to reach Europe.

No Simple Way Home

Directed by the South-Sudanese Akuol de Mabior, it offers an intergenerational conversation that charts the struggle to reconcile family and country. Girl Taken

Directed by Simon Wood and Francois Verster, this tells the incredible story of two parents, whose baby was stolen from Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town at birth, who miraculously found her 17 years later, and who then lost her again.

Taamaden

Directed by Seydou Cisse, this follows three young immigrants from West Africa who take the viewer into the world of African spirituality in the age of new technologies.

African Moot

Directed by Shameela Seedat, it shares the story of the competitors in the prestigious African Human Rights Moot Court Competition.

The Double Futures of Athlone

Directed by Premesh Lalu, this is a cultural history of Athlone, one of apartheid’s “dumping ground” for the victims of forced removals.

Black Mambas

Directed by Lena Karbe, it follows the first all-women anti-poaching unit in South Africa, assigned to protect the Big Five (elephants, rhinos, lions, leopards and buffalo) in the Greater Kruger National Park.

Chosen by the (mostly white male) conservation committees as a vital marketing tool, the women stand at the crossroads of progress and a colonial past.

Lesotho the Weeping Motherland

Directed by Lwazi Duma Nk, it speaks about the effects of climate change in the agricultural sector.