The Associated Press - November 25, 2005
Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn

"I didn't know it was done alphabetically," he said. "So by the time the first four films were done I thought, 'There's no way in hell we're going to be the fifth film.' And then we were. That was quite a rush."

"Yesterday" ended up not winning the Oscar, but Roodt's longtime collaborator, producer Anant Singh, notes the nomination had special meaning "because it's South Africa's first-ever nomination and the first film ever in Zulu. Those were two satisfying reasons."

But perhaps the nomination's greatest significance was that Roodt and Singh - known for their anti-apartheid films "Sarafina!" and "Cry, the Beloved Country" - were at last validated for the social consciousness that has defined their work for nearly two decades.

"Yesterday" confronts a new atrocity that has afflicted their homeland since the new South African democracy took hold 10 years ago. Airing Monday (9 p.m. EST) on HBO, the English-subtitled film tells the year-in-the-life story of a young, rural mother named Yesterday who has been diagnosed with AIDS.

Roodt spent two years researching in the Zululand villages of South Africa - a country with more HIV-positive people than anywhere in the world, yet with only one physician for every 18,000 people.

It is in a scene detailing the long wait to see a doctor that we are introduced to Yesterday (played by Leleti Khumalo) and her 7-year-old daughter, Beauty (Lihle Mvelase). They have walked two hours from home in the summer's heat, only to be turned away until the following week, and then the next. After finally being diagnosed, Yesterday makes the precarious journey to confront her husband, away in Johannesburg working in the mines. Though her life hangs in the balance, she is resolved to be with her daughter on her first day of school.

"I wasn't sure whether this was written by Darrell, by a white man - if I may say so - because it's so very true," says Khumalo, speaking from Johannesburg.

The actress teamed with Roodt and Singh in 1991's "Sarafina!" Then again in 1995's "Cry, The Beloved Country," and recently in "Faith's Corner," which just wrapped production.

"'Yesterday' is about women in the village," Khumalo continues. "It tells how important women are in South Africa, and how important women are in the world. This woman ... she is alone taking care of the child. There's no money in the rural areas, so she has to find her way."

The film was shot on a modest budget in four weeks on location in Zululand, with the region's breathtaking vistas giving the cinematic novella an authentic sense of place. It is the poetic rhythms of the Zulu language, however, that gives "Yesterday" its heart.

"I've been yearning to do it for years in this country," says Roodt, who wrote the script in English, then had it translated. "I was quite amazed at how I was able to pick up a stumble, or where the tone wasn't exactly right. It was easier than I thought and has given the film an essential truth. I think that's why it works."

That sense of honesty is something today's increasingly cynical audiences don't necessarily get in the "big marketed, heavily packaged movie," says Colin Callender, president of HBO Films, which financed "Yesterday.""They are looking for movies with real soul and real heart, that are honest and truthful."

Telling the powerful stories of South Africa is what brought the then novice producer and struggling young director together in the 1980s. Their first film, "A Place for Weeping," shot on the run from security police, was the first South African film made about apartheid.

"And although we made it together, we couldn't see it in the same theater because at the time, cinemas were segregated," says Singh, who is of Indian origin. "But we both had the similar objective of making motion pictures that are socially relevant.

"Interestingly enough, when I read 'Yesterday,'" Singh adds, "I thought, here we are almost in a similar situation, where apartheid is being replaced by HIV and AIDS. What can we do but to make a film that can put audiences into an emotional journey that demonstrates the horrific nature of the disease and the challenges that it brings."

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