Director

Etienne Kallos

France, Greece, South Africa, Poland | 2018 | 105 min | English, Afrikaans, Zulu

• Producer Sophie Erbs, Michael Auret, Giorgos Karnavas, Mariusz Wlodarski
• Production Company Cinema Defacto, Spier Films, Heretic, Lava Films
• Screenplay Etienne Kallos
• Cinematography Michal Englert
• Editing Muriel Breton
• Sound Leandros Ntounis
• Cast Brent Vermeulen, Alex van Dyk, Juliana Venter, Morné Visser
• Contacts

  Pyramide International

  avalentin@pyramidefilms.com,

About the Film

The Afrikaans in South Africa are neither white nor black, and being somewhere in between two races, they have to grapple with their own, unique problems. Etienne Kallos's The Harvesters / Die Stropers, which premiered last May at the Un Certain Regard in Cannes, is an impressive feature debut that explores one of the complex facets of the Afrikaans. A moody, undercurrent drama, the film looks at the challenges of masculinity in the community.

Janno is barely 15 and he works at one of the large Afrikaner farms situated in the semiarid region of the country. Although he has a muscular physique, his face is soft and feminine, and he harbors homosexual tendencies. Desperate to love and be loved by all those close to him, Janno faces a crisis when his family of father, mother and three younger (adopted) sisters welcome another member into their home. The new arrival is a strapping youth, Pieter, who is about the same age as Janno. They are diametrically different from each other: Pieter is wiry – not stocky like Janno – and insolent, brash and over-confident. A question begins to trouble Janno: will he have to give up his position as an alpha male among his sisters and within the small world that he is part of?

Kallos, who also wrote the screenplay, is apparently with Janno, and the story is narrated from the boy's point of view. The dilemma that he faces of wanting to be Pieter or be with him as his brother – which the family hopes for – has been nuanced with brilliant sensitivity. There is also something poignant about Janno's desire to be a he-man of sorts and his underlying, hidden sexual preference. While Pieter openly courts girls, Janno gets sexually aroused thinking of a guy he met at a boys' camp. Thanks to the terrific casting, the film conveys the boys’ individual and combined insecurities, and the general uncertainty of Afrikaner families – once rulers of the country, and now mere relicts of a dark past.

Gautaman Bhaskaran