Zephany Nurse story heads for the big screen

“WE WILL show our true emotions to the world for the first time.”

This is what Morne Nurse said about the documentary, Girl Taken, which premiers today at the Labia Theatre in Orange Street in Cape Town at 5.30pm.

For the first time, the Nurse family, including the kidnapper’s family will watch their six-year filming journey in its complete form.

In an exclusive interview with the Weekend Argus, Nurse and their daughter Miche Solomon, better known as Zephany Nurse, shared his emotions on the eve of the release of the 92-minute film.

It follows the experiences of Morne and Celeste, their heartache, joy and pain from the day their 3-day-old baby Zephany was snatched by Lavona Solomon, a seamstress from Seawinds in Lavender Hill at Groote Schuur Hospital in April 1997 to 17 years later when they found their daughter.

Their youngest daughter, Cassidy, attended the same school as a girl called Miche and the two girls resembled one another. DNA tests later revealed Miche was the Nurses’ long-lost daughter.

After the kidnapping, the couple had three more children.

The film shows the raw emotions shared by the couple, their marriage shattered by the huge loss and the reconciliation and new marriage – and dealing with secondary loss after meeting their daughter who was a total stranger and learning to gain her love and trust.

The movie was directed by Francois Verster and Simon Wood.

Miche, who is a mother of two, said she was anxious and happy to see the movie as she had only seen extracts. “I feel overwhelmed and excited,” she said. “This is a huge achievement as a family and although we are still not where we would like to be, we are working on it.”

Nurse said: “We never could have dreamt that something like this would have happened to us. When you find your child, you are happy and you know you have your daughter back but it is more than that.

“It is something that we never realised, what lay ahead of us. The film tells of the desire to heal, how things became broken and how this family became one again.”