What a fantastic feeling, to be in Cannes – at the wondrous Cannes Film Festival – and have the last official film of the festival be set in South Africa!
The film is called “Zulu” – yes, it has the same name as the movie that Michael Caine made famous…but this one does not include Isandlwana or anything in history that far back – this film is set in today’s day, with the aftertaste of apartheid.
This is the fourth feature film from Frenchman Jerome Salle and is being touted as a “South African detective film”.
It pits black against white, and shows in some wonderfully harrowing scenes – including a breathtaking visual of a white and black man chasing each other across the dunes – the torment and damage that has been done to the soul of the black man, a man who thinks he is okay, a man who wants to move on…but who apartheid has damaged so badly, he will never be able to truly forgive.
As he set out to do, Jerome has create a film that captures how marked South Africans are by their history.
The cinematography is beautiful – I feel so bad to say it, but it has taken a Frenchman to truly capture the beauty of South Africa in a way that sets a South African movie on the global stage. It has the quality of that international feel to it.
Starring Forest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom, the film was shot on location in Cape Town. I cried, I laughed. I was proud. I was ashamed.
Orlando Bloom © eskwad