DURBAN, South Africa, Aug 26 (AFP) - It may be hailed as a moving piece of cinematic fiction but for millions of South Africans, its a frighteningly real story unfolding daily in the poverty-stricken countryside.
"Yesterday", written and directed by South African filmmaker Daryl James Roodt, is about a poor, young HIV-positive mother struggling to raise her daughter alone in a desolate landscape, while coming to terms with her imminent death from AIDS.
After premiering in Durban in June, the film opens in cinemas across South Africa on Friday and will be featured at the Venice Film Festival next week before heading to the Toronto Film Festival in September.
The beautifully-shot drama is set in the rolling hills of Zululand in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province -- a picturesque but harsh territory -- and is the first international film made in the local Zulu language.
It follows the life of an illiterate Zulu woman, interestingly named Yesterday, in a small, remote village as she struggles to eek out a living tilling the soil, while trying to keep her inquisitive seven-year-old daughter occupied.
After she finds out she has contracted HIV from her migrant husband, who works in a Johannesburg goldmine, her health begins to fail, making the tiring chores of gathering water and firewood and the long walks to the nearest clinic, agonising.
Yesterday decides that she will not succumb to the disease until her bright daughter is enrolled at school, an opportunity she never had.
"We are very proud to have made the film," veteran producer Anant Singh told AFP.
"I think what it does is it gives audiences an in-depth look at life in South Africa. The important thing is that it celebrates South African women and moral strength they have to deal with the hardships," he said.
Singh, whose international work includes acclaimed anti-apartheid films "Sarafina!" and "Cry the Beloved Country", sees the movies screening in Venice and Toronto as an opportunity to show the experiences of his compatriots.
"After Cannes, Venice is probably the biggest film festival in the world so its great to have a South African film there to showcase to the world and especially one in an indigenous language," Singh said.
Roodt said he was inspired by the effect of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on rural people. The films title comes from a Zulu naming custom, where people give their children names like Confidence, Innocent or Tomorrow.
"I was named that by my father. He said things were better yesterday than today," the main character explains to a doctor in a scene.
"I thought that Yesterday had beautiful melancholic reverberations," Roodt said.
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africas most populous province and home to the Zulu ethnic group, has the highest HIV infection rate in the country -- a staggering one in four women are said to have the virus.
As evident in many local communities, the drama also portrays the fear and ignorance associated with HIV/AIDS.
In one of the final scenes, Yesterday and her bedridden dying husband are driven out of her home by neighbours who fear being infected by the couple.
She goes on to single-handedly build a tin shack on a lonely hilltop.
"Its a sad story but it's also an uplifting one at the same time," Singh says.
The production received standing ovations when it premiered at the Durban International Film Festival here in June as well as at a special screening at the International HIV/AIDS Conference in Bangkok in July.
While Singh and Roodt, who have made nine movies together, hoped the film would inspire some viewers to act against the AIDS pandemic, they were careful not to make a movie that "preached" to people.
"We decided to do a story that is, in one sense, quite simple but that also takes the viewer through a journey in a way that they are impacted by it," he said.
"Yesterday" features an all-South African cast starring Kwazulu Natal natives Leleti Khumalo, of "Sarafina!" fame, and newcomer Lihle Mvelase, who had never acted before, as her daughter.
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