Cape Town-based Be Phat Motel Company has launched a new film after a hiatus of three years. Sweetheart, which stars actor/ singer Inge Beckmann, is described as “a retro-styled, haunting genre-bender’. The film is said to have cause a buzz since it released a teaser campaign on the Internet.
Set against the shadow of an escalating cold war, Sweetheart sees a young housewife find herself alone in a remote farmhouse when her husband and sons don’t return from an everyday trip into town. With hints of strange events just over the horizon, she breaks a monotonous routine to set off in search of them. What she finds instead is a world seemingly derelict, and she must navigate a series of unsettling encounters to find answers in a Cape Town that feels familiar, yet will reveal itself to be a marked alternative to the world we remember. Fans of the Motel’s typical dark edge won’t be disappointed. “Now you see…’
Finished in black and white, the 26min film was originally planned as a short conceptual piece, but grew in scale and ambition into an original South African story which while modern in concept is based an the science fiction classics of the 50s and 60s.
Be Phat Motel produced and self-funded the film almost exclusively, and finished it to the highest quality.
Sweetheart is directed by Michael Matthews, written by Sean Drummond and features Anthony Oseyemi and Andre Weideman alongside Beckmann, with support from Norman Murray, Aidan Whytock, Pope Jerrod and more.
