Twenty-three year old South Africa filmmaker Tristan Holmes has won an Oscar in the honorary foreign film category of the 33rd Annual Student Academy Awards in Los Angeles, for his final year film project, Elalini.
Holmesis an ex-studentof AFDA, the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance. He describes Elalini as “a human story about forgiveness, rebirth and new beginnings”. The 30-minute film follows the story of a mother, Nomakaya, who must choose between forgiving her father and accepting her son, or else lose what she loves.
The Student Oscars is an American competition conducted by the Academy Awards Foundation. Past winners include Spike Lee,John Lasseterand Robert Zemeckis.
SA has done well with Oscars in 2006, with Tsotsi winning the Best Foreign Language Film and SA-born Dion Beebe winning Best Cinematography for Memoirs of a Geisha earlier this year.
See Elalini feature in the May edition of Screen Africa.
