South African writer / director Marius van Niekerk’s My Heart of Darkness will have its African premiere at the upcoming TriContinental Film Festival. The film was co-directed and produced by Staffan Julen.
Four war-veterans, from different sides, step onto a boat at the mouth of the Kwando river deep within the African interior. They are on a journey back to past battlefields, the sites where they as youngsters, tried to kill each other during apartheid South Africa¹s interventions in Namibia and Angola (1975-1992).
But now, 20 years later, they’ve come together as former enemies, a new unit of disparate souls joined together not only by the common haunting of war trauma, but also by their need to understand, to reconcile, to forgive.
Shot against a spectacular backdrop of African savannah, My Heart of Darkness is a film about unthinkable suffering, grotesque brutality and meaningless violence, of disappointment, but most of all of hope. It shows how a common denominator steers the course of four people’s lives, from very different sides to set off on a path that will change them forever.
My Heart of Darkness was in competition at the 2010 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), where it had its world premiere. It was nominated in the best feature-length documentary category.
It was also in competition at this year’s Goteborg International Film Festival and the Tempo Film Festival Stockholm.
The film has been picked up by Swedish distributor Folkets Bio and opened at Swedish cinemas in March this year. It will be broadcast on Swedish Television Channel 1 Documentary during this autumn.
The film will have its German premier in September and will be broadcast on TV before the end of the year.
My Heart of Darkness screenings at the Tri Continental Film Festival:
Johannesburg: Soweto, Maponya – 5.30pm 9th September
Johannesburg, Bioscope – 3pm 10th September
Johannesburg, Rosebank Cinema Nouveau – 8pm 14th September
Cape Town: Cinema Nouveau Cape Town – 5pm 17th Sept/ 6.30 21st Sept.
