The controversial film Triomf about the sordid life of a poor white family overcome by the political and social changes in South Africa in 1994, will finally be released in South Africa.
Triomf, directed by the Egyptian-born Michael Raeburn and based on Marlene van Niekerk’s award-winning novel of the same name, will go on circuit in Cape Town at the Labia as well as Nu-Metro cinemas in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, and Menlyn Park in Pretoria on 20 February 2009.
The film was completed early last year, and has so far only played at international film festivals, including Cannes, Pusan (South Korea) and Durban.
After watching Triomf in Cannes, French film critic Michel Amarger had this to say: “This new film by Michael Raeburn is a pearl, and one of the most vibrant signs of the sort of films that can be made in South Africa today. At last a digital movie designed for the big screen, with well-constructed images, subtle colourization, individualistic framing and actors directed with a master’s touch…. Triomf is the result of independent production that can regenerate the standard landscape of South African cinema.”
Triomf also won the coveted award for Best South African Film at last year’s Durban International Film Festival. The citation by Junaid Ahmed at the awards ceremony sums up the film’s appeal: “… by immersing itself into the often sordid world where poverty, and the educational gaps that attend it, meet an arrogant sense of entitlement, Triomf exposes a series of universal truths. The dirty secrets of capitalism, of racism, of manipulative politics, of the human heart are mirrored in the secrets of one family, whose disastrous disintegration reminds us that a nation’s history is written by individuals.”
Raeburn, who has been making films since the 1970s, is extremely excited at the prospect of the film finally reaching a South African audience. He asserts that although the story is set at a key moment in South African history – April 1994 – the politics are background.
“I believe it (Triomf) throws a most original light on issues of prejudice by exposing the close link between race and class, while suggesting that isolation can breed strange behaviour and strange ideas,” says Raeburn.
