CINEMA AFRICA 2021 - In Conversation with Sara Blecher
Abstract
- Abstract
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In the german city of Bayreuth, during the winter of 2021, the 13th edition of the CINEMA AFRICA film festival took place. Despite the ongoing pandemic, the team of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence and a group of filmmakers from different corners of the globe were able to showcase five films, that truly showcased the artistic diversity of modern day African filmmaking. With a regional focus on the Indian Ocean, last year's films took us from Tanzania and South Africa to La Réunion and Mauritius, creating a space for stories once overlooked and untold.
During the filmmakers' short stay in Bayreuth, we, the Cluster of Excellence, were able to sit down with each filmmaker to talk about her/his respective works.
In this video Interview Ms. Marie Tsogo and Mr. Duncan Tarrant talk with South African filmmaker Sara Blecher about her film, Mayfair. Amongst other things, the filmmaker talks about the South African Thriller and her reimagination of it.
CINEMA AFRICA 2021 Trailer:
https://youtu.be/ic2xULGVZ5A
Cinema Africa Interviews:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDlHB4qY36Wi8VczSMvmrDs1zFXoRRh0-
Thanks for Watching!
Origins & context
- Title
- CINEMA AFRICA 2021 - In Conversation with Sara Blecher
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- Cinema Africa 2021
- Date
- April 27, 2022
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- okay good one sarah morning okay please could you introduce yourself so my name is sarah bletcher and i'm a filmmaker from south africa um and i've been working in the industry for oh my goodness 20 years i think maybe more than 20 years so i've been living in working in johannesburg where which is the background for many of my films my first question would just be in regards to the name of the film mayfair could you perhaps explain for those who aren't familiar with johannesburg the reason for naming the film mayfair and also briefly perhaps with reference to your previous films why you chose to work with the south asian and somali communities in this film um so mayfair is a suburb in johannesburg and during the time of apartheid mayfair was an indian so during apartheid people had to live with their ethnic groups and you know there was apartheid so people were divided indian people lived in specific areas white people lived in specific areas black people lived in specific areas so mayfair during apartheid was an indian area and it was it was actually an indian muslim area part of part of joburg and after apartheid because it had been a muslim area because there were a lot of mosques in the area because there was halal food because there was you know an islamic culture in the area when somali refugees arrived in joburg many of them felt comfortable in in mayfair so as the old sort of formal established indian families made money and started leaving the areas when apartheid ended because they could now live in different parts of the city the the muslim immigrants that came into south africa came into these areas so you had a big influx of somalis and ethiopians arriving and settling in in mayfair and what's what kind of happened and what the background i guess the reason i'm going into so much detail is it's the background for the film so what happened was that you had these indian families some of whom obviously not all of whom but some of whom were gangsters and involved in illicit trades and and gangs controlled large areas of mayfair so when the somalis came in uh somali gang started competing over turf with the indian gangs and that's really the the background of the film so that's that's what the film is wanting to portray i think your question was what's my face maybe is a suburb in johannesburg so it's a well-known suburb that people from it's there are two suburbs that sort of link together the one is fordsberg and the one is mayfair but people in joburg know that area and they know the history of of the area so within a south african context this was now a film that was going to concentrate on that area with that historic background and why did you choose now to to work with the south asian and with the indian communities and work on mayfair because for some people perhaps they might be surprised to find a film about south asian community in south africa with their their impressions of what south africa is yeah um so i mean i know that you've worked with um so subcultures of black communities in south africa in their past and we've worked also on uh afrikaan communities in south africa so perhaps could you explain why why did you choose to work with the south africa south asian community now yeah um you know the the now question was because i met um the the co-producers the two young guys who worked on the film with me um and they came to me with this incredible story so it was a story about one of their very close friends who had grown up in this community in mayfair with his father being a gangster and he was an incredibly devout religious young muslim man and had come into conflict with his dad over what he felt was his father's hypocrisy you know he had gone and worked in refugee camps and trying to do good and trying to be a good islamic boy and came home and discovered oh my god this is who my father really is and this is the work my father is doing and so he was conflicted by that so they came to me with that story idea and i started spending time in mayfair and started exploring the world and i was like this is joburg you know it was a part of the city that i had never really been involved in and you know i mean you if you live in jervik you go buy indian food in mayfair so you know mayfair but it was it was amazing to me it was a long process of a couple of years of working with these with these young guys um and them taking me into their world and slowly taking me into the somali part of the of the world and it was such it was such an eye opener for me and so exciting because i think one of the things that i love and i think it crosses all my films is joe book you know joe berg is like the link to so much of the work that i've done in my life it's such an extraordinary city to me it's it's a city that is in a way like new york it's constantly changing it's constant influxes of different people that change the nature of the city and that's something that i'm totally fascinated by so suddenly seeing jo berg in i mean i'm born in joburg and not all my life but half my life spent in jobu and suddenly having to see the city in a completely new way was totally exciting to me it was yeah wonderful yes yeah and you mentioned then this is a very islamic community and throughout the film we we see a lot of uh islamic imagery and the philosophies and uh even just the court of prayer is always very prominent within the soundtrack and the score um and in particular we see these ideals of honor and trust of submission and sacrifice uh coming through uh repeatedly and in the actions of the two uh the true brothers and i mean they're not i don't think they're related by blood yeah um in the face of sacrifice and submission to their father aziz yeah um the way that they make these sacrifices contrasts darkly and it it gave me imagery of cain and abel and also the prodigal son yeah from the bible yeah um but ultimately their their different ideas of sacrifice set them against each other in in a very uh shall we i don't want to ruin the film for anybody but in a very difficult way and what does the film then tell us about these islamic ideals and what are the limits of submission and also the extremes of sacrifice um yeah i mean the the film absolutely engages with all those issues you know the ideas of cain and abel the idea of the godfather you know the idea of the son becoming the father and in fact both sons becoming the father you know in in an attempt to not be the father they become the fa well you you know especially zaid makbir sort of follows in the father's footprints until he isn't you know he he no longer does but yes in terms of sacrifice the you know one of the very um beginning images of the film is the killing of the sheep and and that sacrifice when when you watch that that moment is supposed to be a moment where it's that's what he doesn't want to do right he doesn't want to have to kill the sheep's life he even says i was hoping i would miss this um so that sets up questions around sacrifice and it sets up questions around what you actually have to overcome to become the person your father wants you to be or to to become to to live your ideals and whether you can actually uh do that okay all along along the the movies we have this relationship between zaid and his father which is very antagonist what can explain a disconflict in their relationship um i i think it's exactly that i think as a young person very often we and you know so i'm going to answer that question in a in a roundabout way if that's right but i think um you know i mean i am a white jewish south african so what is a white jewish south african doing making a film about a male i mean female about a male islamic world like that that is in many ways almost as far as you can come you know that that is absolutely not my world it's the opposite of my world my world is very female my world is jewish my world is all these other things and i think what was so extraordinary in my journey in this film was coming to see the human beings in the film and how similar the human relationships were so you know the culture and the exterior of the film is foreign but the the nature of people is so similar and it was an amazing experience to me working um with with imran and umar the the two guys because they had a similar journey to the journey i had so as we were working on the script and as we were working on the story we started realizing how similar we were you know and in the same way that i saw them as young indian muslim men and they saw me as this white jewish south african woman we we started realizing how similar the cultures were and how similar the family dynamics were and so for me i think what i as a filmmaker bring to the story i think what what they brought to the story was the culture and the world and the aesthetic and i think what i brought to the story was my understanding of humans and it's exactly that relationship between so i am answering your question but it's exactly that relationship between the father and the son that is the heart of the film you know it's it's as young people we very often we look at our parents and we just see the hypocrisy you know with zayd he sees his father as a very religious man who's also a gangster who's also killing people and he wants him to be a killer and that's not something he can put together until he is forced into a position which maybe is a position that one day his father was also put into where your true self comes and actually zade's true self is a killer you know so when it when it comes to the moment and i don't want to give away the movie but when it comes to the moment where he has to murder he can do it and it's the same thing that he does with the sheep you know like he doesn't want to do it but actually it comes to him and maybe part of why he doesn't want to do it is because it's so natural yeah i mean at the end of the day the two of them are very very alike yeah and despite the fact that they perhaps believe themselves to be so different um i really really enjoyed that about the film how i think you mentioned it earlier how the son becomes the father and despite this antagonism despite their different beliefs that of of what they're doing to be right they actually are both proud and um both willing to make those sacrifices uh to then protect their family or protect the people that they care about um i mean exactly the the the scene for me that that shows that is the end scene where they're washing the body yes um and zed's dad puts his hand on it's the first time he really shows in any kind of a real affection as well yeah it's really beautiful and they're just joined because you see them as the same person doing the same thing but it was like at the end the father was disappointed by the way that his son becomes like him yeah he was i mean i don't think he was so in in the way that i understand the story there are two sons you know it's like you said like the the the canaan evil story so they're both they're both his sons and the one he is willing to let be like him the one he wants to try and keep here so in a way it is a disappointment but it's also a sadness that being like him made him kill his other son you know so yeah um does that does that make sense yes okay so um we talked about the men and the men in the story i would also like to bring bring up the point with the women they're often portrayed in very traditional gender roles um and defined often in relationship to the men within their lives as as mothers wives sisters girlfriends um and they're they're shown as loving loyal devoted hard-working but i also wanted to point out that there are several moments where they go against these these sort of narratives which are expected of them and challenge the men in the story and thinking in particular uh of the scene where the wife says no i'm going to do this i'm going to sell the company or of when their sister devises a plot to try and free herself or when amina you know stands up to zaid and says no that's not what we're going to do like you have to consider me as well and how important are these moments for you uh in the grand scheme of the film and why did you choose to portray the women in this way i i don't know how else to betray women so the the the women for me you know they're the ones who have agency who make the decisions that affect the plot um and yeah that's the way i understand women so it was impossible to to you know it is it is a world where women are more submissive um and it is a world where women particularly the the world in joburg mayfair which is you know the one i i got to see a little bit but it is a world in which women are invisible um but not powerless you know they still have the power of making decisions of affecting i mean in this case of affecting the story of affecting the plot of having agency and yeah i i can't imagine making a film in which women don't have agency i would see no point in that because yeah that's not the way i understand the world i think women do have agency when they take it and those are the stories i'm interested in perhaps you could also mention very cool very shortly about your work with swift i believe it is yes and just for those who those who perhaps don't know about that um okay so yes i think i had a long conversation about this but sure i'm happy to talk about it so um i think it was about four or five years ago um a group of women in south africa came together and you know the the big problem i mean i can't say that but the big problem they're lots of big problems but for me a huge problem in south africa is the amount of gender-based violence in the country it's it's higher than anywhere in the world the amount of violence against women and i think as filmmakers or people that make tv in a way you cannot be engaged in filmmaking or making television without engaging in the issues of fighting against gender-based violence because i think that as filmmakers we have the tool of entering people's homes every night and you know we have such a powerful tool to change behavior if you show a different kind of behavior you present different possibilities to people about how we can be different and so i think in in many ways it's almost impossible to not take that responsibility seriously and it got to a point in my career where i and a group of other women came together and said okay so what do we do how do we use this tool that we have and how do we try and change behavior in the country because it clearly needs to happen and the the biggest thing we realized is that the best way of doing that is getting more women involved in the industry because the minute you start having women involved in the industry you change the culture within the industry firstly so that that's the culture that people live in and then that's the culture they start portraying but also you can impact on what is going on on what is being portrayed you need women writers you need women directors you need women's cinematographers you need you need more women in the industry so we set up an organization called swift which is sisters working in film and television to literally look at that problem to say okay why aren't there more women in the industry and how do we bring more women into the industry um and that's the work that swift has been doing ever since so the the first thing that we did i was explaining this to you but the first thing that we did was we were like okay so let's do a study let's find out exactly what is going on in the industry why are women not in it are there women in it are we not seeing are we not understanding and the findings of that study were really interesting i mean were interesting on many levels i mean the the one big problem that we realized was that you know there was so much sexual harassment within the industry that women were just leaving you know i mean it's like if women work in an industry where there's so much sexualization and so much it's so hostile to them why would they stay it's so hostile why would they stay but it's also it's like you're asking women to do jobs and you tying their hands behind their backs and you're saying okay now go and be a filmmaker you know whereas actually we need people to be able to have two hands to do their their job so there was this horror i mean there is a horrible culture of sexual harassment within the industry that that's the one thing we found the second thing we found was and this was so interesting because it's something i didn't expect was that you know women were involved in the industry in the early parts of their career and then in the late parts of their career but sort of in the middle parts of their career there were no women there there were no women working in the film industry from like their 30s to their 50s and we started trying to unpack why and you know the industry is so unfriendly to mothers so it's like when you look at that's the time in women's lives where they have babies and where they're you know having families and the way the industry is designed it's almost impossible for women to work in the industry in those periods so those those were kind of the big issues that we found as as as the result of the study and those are the industries we've been i mean those are the issues we as an organization have been trying to tackle so it's like when you ask me about like empowered women yes that's my thing i can't portray women in a submissive way because that would go against everything i have ever done could you tell us more about your filmography sure so i i was very lucky i studied at nyu in new york and then my very first job um leaving nyu after i graduated was doing research on a bbc frontline documentary so they sent me to south africa and said you're south african you go and be our fixer and go and come and tell us what is happening in the civil war in south africa just as apartheid was ending and i came home to south africa and met my husband who i interviewed he was one of the first people i interviewed and then i stayed and never went back to new york again so i stayed in south africa started working in documentary so my career started working in documentary films doing journalism news current affairs kind of productions and then from there i moved into drama it was i think documentary became for me very very difficult because i think what what what happened and what i what i realized when i interviewed somebody and then he was killed as a result of doing that interview i documentary became for me very you you would affect people's lives without knowing what that effect would be um but you could have big ramifications like the the guy who got killed i i mean i i i don't think it was my fault he got killed but somebody found out that he'd given an interview and he was murdered so documentary became very hard for me and i realized actually you can tell the same thing in in in fiction but you don't affect people's lives in the same way so i started working in television drama i made some drama series and then luckily i got to make a feature film and then have been making feature films ever since then but when did your first feature film come out my first feature film was a film called otillo burning which was about yeah it was about the time when i arrived back in south africa so it was about that period of south africa's history where apartheid was ending when there was a big change and it was a story of a group of young boys coming of age at that time when freedom was happening and about their relationships with each other yeah i think all my films somehow play out on a big uh background but it's a small personal story that happens against you know the change of apartheid or in the case of mayfair it's you know an influx of of refugees and asylum seekers moving into an inner city so sort of against the background of a big geopolitical or national but i don't know what you want to say but it's actually the small story of the the people whose lives happen against that that background so the first form i did was a taylor burning then i made a film called a yonder which was um which which i actually made for my daughter because i i realized that there were no real role models for young african women trying to grapple with being modern in in the african content african context so yeah i made that film for my my daughter it's the story of a young girl coming of coming of age who sort of is exploring her own creativity and her own uniqueness and sort of forging a pathway for herself in the world and then you mentioned also there was some controversy well some problems that were caused for your filmmaking how was it with the your most recent film about uh i can't remember how it's pronounced but the what anna said something along those lines yes could you tell us a little bit about that so that that that that was a story again about a world that i know nothing about it is about afrikaans community um and it was a story about a young girl who was abused by her stepfather um so that story yeah i mean in in many ways i i think people thought that that would be the one that's closest to me because it's at least a white community but in fact it was it was really interesting because for me it was the most foreign film out of all the like in terms of worlds that i had absolutely no access to it was because i had grown up in apartheid that afrikaans world for us was something that was so rejected you know it was it was something that we we looked at and said no so so for me to make a film about that world was it was it was challenging um but really really good ultimately and i i i think that in terms of you know it's something i knew nothing about there's a whole afrikaans film industry in south africa that sort of like co-exists with the other film industry but there's very little crossover so the one industry almost knows nothing about the other industry and it was really an interesting experience for me to get involved in that industry you know to work with people that were making films in in afrikaans because i i think um i think it's something that i realized that's very similar to what happened in germany after the war you know when there was like new german cinema it was it was germans grappling with a history of the war and a history of you know what had been the role of germany in the war and i think in afrikaan cinema it's very similar i think that uh you know young afrikaans people had to grapple with you are the people who did apartheid or our parents are the people who did apartheid how do we now look back and not make cinema that makes the world all white and all pretty like how do we look back and and see backwards in a different way and it's really it was really interesting to me that to to see that thing happening um it was yeah okay and you did my fair in 2018 and the first image of the movies is in the dark in kenya in a kenya refugee school yeah what decides that why did you decide to start the film in kenya not in johannesburg where the the rest of the film takes part is shooting yeah um i i think if you if you look at the journey of the film the journey is of a young man who's think he who thinks he's broken away from his father who thinks that he's on a course to to live his life in a direction that is far from his father as far from his father's could be is doing good in a refugee camp helping people get food and then when he gets kicked out of the refugee camp for trying to be good that's when his whole journey turns and he now starts to become his father slowly so the the idea was if the film was going to end with him becoming his father in his mother's home we have to start with him not being his father as far away as possible and i also i you know i was so interested in the darp it's such an interesting place um yeah so that's the name of the refugee camp that's yeah that's the name of the refugee camp in and why in the in the in the night why in the night well you know the film it starts even with uh sort of breaking the law with a deceit like yeah i mean he's trying to do good but he he the film starts with this dark and uh tense scenes in a in a camp in a refugee camp which deteriorates into desperation and violence um and we were just wondering like there's there seems to be a lot of use of these the nighttime daytime uh to to show different things about when zaid sort of just makes steps to lose control almost always seems to be in in the dark yeah and we were wondering whether that was something that was a conscious choice whether it was just i wish it had been [Laughter] it it wasn't a conscious choice i mean the the conscious choices is playing with the colors so if you look at the clothes it's like they're white and white and white and black and like that is that is in terms of good and evil and you know consciously the the the aesthetic of the film is very bare you know like there's the walls are very white and plain and that's something that that i definitely noticed within that world you know like in in that joburg muslim mayfair world you can't have adornment like adornment is and anti-anti-islam so there's there is very very little which which contrasts so much with the fomanda that i did which is you know it's such a rich warm colorful film and then suddenly to to have an aesthetic of a film which is you know i mean when when you do filmmaking the last thing you ever want is a white wall if you work with an art director if there's a white wall they'll put something on it they will always because it's just it's so aesthetically quite displeasing you know it's not colorful it's not warm it's not rich but um yeah that's that's how we played out this film and that that that was very conscious it's actually interesting that you mentioned that because the next question that we have it has to do with the the settings um and the small closed rooms which almost always seem to have a mirror in them and there seems to be a lot of shots where you cleverly play with the angle of the camera to either show the same person twice in the reflection or to show uh somebody else who isn't in the original shot through the mirror uh and again these are found in relatively small confined otherwise bare places um and a lot of the time in moments which are very tense with a lot of antagonism either between the characters or within the characters when they're making having some kind of internal conflict and so was this also a con was this also a decision that that you made or is this just the art director saying we need to put something on no i mean that was that was a very conscious decision you know it's that idea of if you look at said so zaid is presents especially when you first meet him as a person trying to do good trying to change the world trying to make the world better but actually who is he like who when when he looks at that reflection who is that reflection and that reflection is literally his father you know it is a person that is capable of incredible evil and incredible badness so it was an attempt to create that layering okay um can you tell us something about the casting of the film yes yes um okay so yeah because i come from a documentary background i much prefer natural acting i i i don't like acting that feels acting um you know i like you to be able to thank you in the real world and that you're with the real people um and in in south africa there is really very very very few indian actors that act in a naturalistic style most indian actors in south africa are very influenced by bollywood and very influenced by you know exaggerated big outside acting um so costing was a huge problem in this film uh just because we couldn't find indian actors uh to to be able to play these roles so actually when you go to mayfair there are a lot of mixed-race people you know they're people who are indian they're people who are colored they're people so many of the actors actually are not indian they're coloured actors but in terms of the somali casting other than the the main gangster somali gangster all the other somali actors are people that we found in mayfair so they're non-actors who which is you know what i love doing i love working with a combination of actors and non-actors i think that working with non-actors is incredibly difficult um but working with actors and non-actors that that combination allows the actors to get the realism from the non-actors and allows the non-actors i mean the actors guide the non-actors through scenes in a way that is very difficult without the actors there um i mean it was it was funny seeing the the the film we saw last night from reunion particularly the first film because you can so easily see where an actor could come in and just guide a conversation so that the conversation moves forward whereas with non-actors very often they repeat lines because they don't know how to make a conversation go to the next part of the conversation particularly an improvised scenes so it's yeah anyway that was an assignment but something that that occurred to me last night and watching the film wonderful um you mentioned earlier about the the different types of south african film um and there's the one scene the climax of the film which happens in the old avalon um which has been brought up by this gangster jalal who i guess represents sort of the bad guy who's been pulling the strings all along and making making everybody's else's lives go go wrong during that scene where zaid comes back after having this realization that it was jalal all along the film projector which is casting onto a white sheet with a seam on it it gets knocked over and the image gets put to the side and then we have all of these lights moving images really projecting onto the characters as they as they have this fight scene and we also have this very stark silhouette in in the moment uh the really tense moment of the film um how important are these these this like play of light and dark and the film screen and how also important is it is the the film the trailer that's being played of joe bullet like this is one of the first south african films to be cast all black so firstly maybe you can say something about the meta level of filming a scene in the cinema and having the fiction of a gangster film become reality in front of us you've just made my day because like if one person noticed that then i'm happy so you really did make my i mean that's that's all very intentional so um avalon that cinema that's that that is portrayed in the film is that there's such a rich history of indian film screenings um in in south africa you know like through the apartheid days so there were a bunch of cinemas and there were a bunch of businessmen who opened indian businessmen who opened cinemas um across the country which was it was it was a huge um i mean if if if you look at some of the very wealthy indian business families uh their own cinemas and they're many of them so in a way avalon i mean avalon was one of those iconic cinemas that it there's nobody in south africa that won't know avalon so it was it was an uh a homage to that time of cinema and absolutely gerbil it was i mean joe but it was yeah it was one of the original black gangster films in south africa that just was extremely widely seen so the idea of that being played in in the cinema we we crafted the whole character of jalal and this was really imran and umar the the two producers i worked with you know they come from that world of those cinemas so for them you know having this this homage to to that world was we're still almost al capone in history and there was i mean there were gangsters who literally dressed and and crafted themselves around those images in the films they were seeing um so that was july that was jalal's whole whole world and character so i'm so thrilled you saw that and i'm certainly proud that you saw the dark shadows [Laughter] so yes thank you okay around in the the movies we have uh this world which always come money money money money and we take examples for money we all trust in religion culture nationality money we all believe in when the money goes wrong everything go wrong yeah is your way to criticize a new liberalism new liberal system in south africa actually it's the way to criticize my own personal family because you know it's it's in my family my my father and my uncle were in business together and things went wrong in business and the family raptured so i i think that's that's what happens so often um you know it's that people put so much in in money which is so nothing like ultimately it's nothing but it can tear things apart um if if you look at the power that money has it's the power to destroy things and that's i think what i've experienced in in my life but it's also clearly what i've experienced in the world so yeah i think it's a criticism of my dad and my uncle and the system to me and [Laughter] i mean it's very interesting how we see all of these characters who are ultimately there i mean maybe apart from jalal who's only interested in making his own private cinema where he can watch gangster films with his friends um we see the somali hassan he's he he shows hey the money that we that you owe us we're going to use it to for the betterment of our community yeah we see that uh aziz also he's giving to charity we hear a quote none of this would have been possible without your father we see the the what the property work whether building homes for students and ultimately they're all trying to to work towards bettering their friends their family their communities but this striving for money uh as you say it when it goes wrong everything goes wrong yeah and that's where we see also these sacrifices and these violence and this manipulation starts to begin um yeah so maybe we're saying we're criticizing the system but i would also ask do you do you think we should also demonize the people who are then forced into these positions so when we look at zaid and we see that he's capable of evil um are we supposed to be find that abhorrent or are we supposed to understand how that happened i mean that's a good question i you know i i can't judge characters in the films that i do i show them because i think that everything is i mean when you make a film you have to be able to understand those people and and in understanding them you understand the complexities you know you understand what drives the good but you also understand what drives the bad and i don't think anyone is good or bad i think everybody is both of those things and i think you present that rather than judge i mean as as a filmmaker you you present that you don't don't judge it and and maybe that is the flaw in the film i think i think that the film if the film was able to judge uh it would be more clear you know and i think that somewhere along the film it's not clear and i think it's because it is it doesn't doesn't want to judge that's anyway that's yeah i'm not sure that's answering your question but it is how i feel i i feel like when people go to cinema people want to see a definitive thing people you know it's like one of the things i'm doing at the moment is i'm working on a netflix crime series and when you watch these crime series on netflix you want to know who did it like you don't want to be left um unclear torn inside about how to feel yeah exactly but life does tear you apart about how to feel and i i think that's something that i as a filmmaker and maybe i as a person struggle with is that i actually don't think there's an answer you know i think that the the journey uncovering is what is so interesting but i think that's not most people so yeah um i i mean i think i think that's all the questions that we have for you but perhaps you just mentioned that you're working on a netflix uh series could you perhaps tell us a little bit more about what what's next for you what what that is and uh how we can uh how we can keep up to date with uh when when to expect that okay so actually with netflix series you're not supposed to talk about them until they get released um but it is yeah so i've gone back to documentary filmmaking okay and i've remembered all the reasons why i left it going back to it but um yeah i i i love reality i think that when you sit in a room and you make things up you're limited by your own imagination as a filmmaker and as a writer reality has no limits you know i was listening to a pod i mean as i was listening to a podcast recently which was talking about war games and how the generals who play these war games are limited by what they think could happen whereas if they get people to play the war games who don't understand war they throw new things that nobody could have imagined and that the generals who are like the ship is going to be here will there be a nuclear attack what's going to happen they can't imagine beyond what they've seen or what they've studied or what's happened before and i feel like reality is the same thing to filmmakers it opens up worlds and doors that are beyond what someone sitting in a room can make up so i'm i'm i mean it's been so thrilling working in documentary again um you know it's just to see how people actually are and what goes on in the world and being having the privilege of being and being able to see um and when you when you work in documentary film it really is a privilege because people want to show you they want themselves to be somehow recorded so they open up in a way that people don't in real life um and it's it's it's such a privilege to see that but it is also the responsibility then of like you know you can affect what's going to happen in their life afterwards and that's that is always particularly in the subjects that i'm interested in which are stakes where the stakes are very high you know the subjects where it's about life and death where things actually matter um you know the series i'm working on is this it's a crime series so obviously it's a murder um but the murder isn't solved and the murderers don't want the murder to be solved it's not when they get punished yes so people that give you interviews are risking huge amounts by by telling you things uh the the risks are so enormous as are the responsibilities um it's tricky so um when when are we going to be able to watch this documentary and also how can we follow what you're doing how can we stay up to date with with you i don't know [Laughter] i i have had such a whiplash reaction against social media i yeah i i think it's ruined the world and i think it's ruining the world i mean i think it's done lots of really great and good things but i think it's doing so much bad to the world and to children and to new generations that i really try and keep myself away from from social media but the series will be on netflix in march or april next year so it will be a south african crime series so if you go to netflix and search south african crime series okay thank you sarah thank you for being here with us thank you for have uh accepting our strength to this question thank you for the interview and have a nice day thank you and thank you to you for being my guide to the bayard i really appreciate it and uh for inviting me here it's been many years since i've been here so it's very nice to be here again you