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AUNTIES |
Year: 2008
UK: ICA Films
Cast: Thuli, Mildred, Sdudla, Eureka, Jackie
Director: Kim Longinotto
Countries: UK / South Africa
Language: Zulu (English subtitles)
UK: 103 mins
UK Certificate: NC
UK Release Date: 16 July 2010 (Limited Release - London, ICA)
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Synopsis
ROUGH AUNTIES follows the multi-racial team of women Thuli, Mildred,
Sdudla, Eureka and Jackie as they rescue and find care for the
abused children and women in poverty-stricken rural Durban, South
Africa. Together they form the “Bobbi Bear” group—so named for
a slain friend “Bobbi” and for the teddy bears they give to the
child victims they help. But their work is as much about raising
awareness as it is about rescuing victims. With HIV/AIDS rampant in
South Africa, sexual abuse acts as an agent for the spread of the
disease and can carry a death sentence for the victim. Timely
reporting of abuse is therefore all the more crucial.
Shot and directed by internationally acclaimed director Kim
Longinotto (HBO’s THE DAY I'LL NEVER FORGET), the film weaves
footage of daytime office and hospital visits with victims of abuse
and night time raids on rural shacks targeting perpetrators of
abuse, many of them released by a system too disorganized to keep
predators off the streets. What emerges is an unflinching,
slice-of-life portrait of a corner of the world, where the women of
“Bobbi Bear” stand out as true heroines.
Longinotto studied camera and directing at England's National Film
School, before working as cameraperson on a variety of documentaries
for TV, including “Cross and Passion,” an account of Catholic
women in Belfast, and “Underage,” a chronicle of unemployed
adolescents in the English city of Coventry. In 1986, she formed the
production company Twentieth Century Vixen.
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