Zulu Love Letter
aka Lettre d'amour zoulou

Screening: 22 August, 6:30pm

France/South Africa
2004
Director: Ramadan Suleman
Production co: JBA Productions, Natives At Large
Producer: Jacques Bidou, Bhekizizwe Peterson
Screenplay: Bhekizizwe Peterson, Ramadan Suleman
Cinematography: Manuel Teran
Editor: Jacques Comets
Music: Zim Ngqawana
Thandi: Pamela Nomvete Marimbe
Mangi: Mpumi Malatsi
Me'Tau: Sophie Mgelna
In English, Zulu and International Sign Language with English subtitles
105 mins
DVD
Certificate TBA

Grief and its many manifestations will undoubtedly appear as a recurrent theme in the work of new South Africa's emerging black filmmakers. Presaging this current, Zulu Love Letter is an emotional tour de force, a complex picture of a soul in torment.

It is ten years since the last vestiges of apartheid's political regime were dismantled. For the average South African, the notion of struggle has been all too quickly relegated to the question of which cellular network is better than the next. But for Thandi, a journalist suffering from writer's block, a more profound struggle continues to rage within. Living in a nation that seems too eager to forget its past, Thandi cannot shake the gnawing sense of guilt that continues to alienate her from her own family. Her estranged thirteen-year-old daughter Mangi, who is deaf and dumb as a result of the beatings Thandi received while in police captivity during her pregnancy, remains closest to Thandi's mother and ex-husband. Thandi's colleague Mike was killed after they were both imprisoned by the police for witnessing the murder of a young female activist named Dineo, and the images of Dineo's clenched fist, Mike's gruesome death and her own torture still haunt her.

As frustration mounts and communication between Thandi and Mangi breaks down, the ghosts begin to surface. When Dineo's mother appears, asking for Thandi's help in locating her daughter's body so that she can lay it to rest, Thandi must revisit her own past in order to bury it at last. Meanwhile, Mangi is hoping to knit the family back together through the traditional collage or Zulu love letter she painstakingly and secretly stitches for her mother.

The gift we are given in Zulu Love Letter is a graphic sense of the final agony of healing wounds. This darkly claustrophobic story is refreshingly told from the intimate perspective of the left-behind womenfolk, those charged with raising the next generation. Rarely are female actors offered such demanding roles and the brilliant, fiery Marimbe rises to the occasion.

Gaylene Gould, Toronto International Film Festival 2004

zululoveletter.co.za