(Lindiwe Matshikiza)
Director
Ian Gabriel’s coming-of-age thriller Four
Corners takes its audience deep into the harsh realities of the unique and
volatile gangland sub-culture of the sprawling Cape Flats.
The film is South Africa’s official entry in
the 2014 Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. It has also
received a nomination for Best International Film from the International Press
Academy (IPA) in Los Angeles.
The cast includes veterans such as Lindiwe
Matshikiza who delivered a powerful rendering as Zindzi Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, beginners
and ‘real people’ (non-actors), and several first time teenage actors, drawn
from schools, chess clubs and communities across the Cape Flats.
“Set against an explosive backdrop, Four Corners has at its centre a vital
message of inspiration and hope,” says Gabriel. “At times raw and violent, at
other times touching and true, the film weaves together the universal themes of
love, loss, kinship, betrayal and redemption.”
The film, takes its title from ‘die vier
hoeke’, South African prison slang for the world within the four corners of a
prison cell. It delves into the world of two of the ‘numbers’ gangs – the 26s
and the 28s – who are engaged in a long standing turf war both in and out of
jail. When 28s member, Farakhan (Brendon Daniels),
is released, he returns to his father’s ramshackle home, quickly taking revenge
on the 26er who was living there in his absence.
Meanwhile,13-year-old chess whiz Ricardo (Jezzriel Skei)
is trying to steer clear of the 26ers, named the ‘Americans’, who rule his
neighbourhood, particularly their cagey and charismatic leader (Irshaad Ally),
who recruits local boys to do his dirty work in exchange for lots of cash.
Smart and soft-spoken, Ricardo sees chess as both a way of life and a way of
escaping gang culture, but the escalating violence resulting from Farakhan’s
actions soon sees him caught in the middle. His story calls to mind that of
Rocket, the boy in the highly-acclaimed ‘City of God’, part tender
coming-of-age film and part gang-warfare epic from the Brazilian slum.
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