You’d expect a film starring three top South African stand-up comics to do phenomenally well at the local box office and such is the case with Material, which stars Riaad Moosa, Joey Rasdien and Nik Rabinowitz. Material made a huge R1.3m in its opening weekend (17- 19 February) at 41 sites and was in the number three spot in the combined Top 10, after Safe House and Semi Soet, both of which had a wider release at 69 screens and 65 screens respectively.
Written and directed by Craig Freimond and produced by Ronnie Apteker and Robbie Thorpe, Material tells the story of Cassim Kaif, a young Muslim man who works in his father’s material shop. Cassim breaks with family tradition and follows his dream of being a stand-up comic.
The film is set in the Indian enclave of Fordsburg, Johannesburg and features Vincent Ebrahim (The Kumars at No. 42) in a starring role as Cassim’s father.
Freimond is delighted with the film’s screen average over the weekend. “It was around R30,000 per screen versus around R20,000 for both Safe House and Semi Soet. Given that we had a slightly smaller footprint than the other two films you could in a way say that we were the top performing film last weekend.
“In many of the the cosmopolitan cinemas like Hyde Park, Montecasino, Rosebank, Killarney, Gateway and Cavendish, we were completely sold out for many shows on the weekend.’
Freimond notes that the public response to Material on the film’s Facebook page has been “amazing’.
