UKZN hosts Durban International Film Festival

THE Centre for Creative Arts (CCA) within the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) is currently hosting the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF), which commenced on July 22 and ends on August 1, 2021.

Now celebrating its 42nd year, the festival is screening selected films and hosting seminars and workshops, all virtually.

Community film screenings, school programmes and engagement with various community organisations around the city of Durban are set to be the pulse of this year’s Isiphethu industry-focused programme at the DIFF. A range of top facilitators, guest speakers and participants are being featured. They headline several of these programmes, as the DIFF continues to position itself as one of the continent’s biggest and most significant festivals.

This year’s opening film was The Eagle’s Nest. An action-thriller directed by award-winning Cameroonian-born, British-based Olivier Assoua, it is set in Africa and addresses migration and poverty.

According to Chipo Zhou, Head of Programming, this film was chosen to open the festival because it is a topical critique of current emigration politics and tells a tale that is highly accessible from an African perspective. “It raises questions on the brain drain and how to make the continent habitable for future generations. It deals with genuine social issues around the trafficking of Africans, a reminder of the not-so-forgotten slave trade. It addresses emigration, which has had a significant impact on the continent in recent years. The younger generations are born into poverty, with fantasies of a better life abroad,” she said.

Assoua commented: “I am thrilled and honoured to have presented the opening film of this year’s Durban International Film Festival. It is such a privilege to be following in the footsteps of the talented

filmmakers who came before me. My movie, The Eagle’s Nest, is an honest take on the politics of modern-day emigration and persistent rural poverty in Africa. My aim was to shed light on those issues and be part of the solution by offering a platform for young Africans to gain new skills in front of and behind the camera. I hope this film succeeds in entertaining viewers as well as in bringing my vision to light.”

The closing film Threshold, an autobiographical documentary by Brazilian director Corarci Ruiz, focuses on a mother who follows the gender transition of her adolescent son. She interviews him between 2016 and 2019, addressing the conflicts, certainties and uncertainties that pervade him in a deep search for his identity. At the same time, the mother, revealed through first-person narration and by her voice behind the camera that talks to her son, also goes through a process of transformation by breaking old paradigms, facing fears, and dismantling prejudices.

The entire programme, alongside all the films that are being screened, is available at https://www.durbanfilmfest.com/

Tickets for the virtual screenings are free and open through a booking system two days ahead of the event.

The 42nd edition of the festival is organised by the CCA with the support of the KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission, National Film and Video Foundation, National Arts Council and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Arts and Culture.