SWEETHEART

"It has just become increasingly clear that there is an untapped, overlooked well of talent in South Africa. The scale of Sweetheart is absolutely staggering for the budget he had to work with and all the technical values are spot on"

The 1950s, and the height of Cold War tension: When her husband and stepsons don’t return from a routine trip, a young housewife finds herself alone in their remote farmhouse. As it becomes clear that they are not coming back, she must force herself out of an aimless cycle, setting off to find them. 

What she finds instead is a seemingly derelict world, empty of all but a few dazed 'survivors'. Unsure who, if anyone, to trust, she must navigate a series of strange encounters to find answers in a world that, with a undercurrent of future science beneath its surface, will reveal itself to be a marked alternative to the world we remember.

High concept and retro-styled, Sweetheart is at the same time a human drama, a love-story-in-waiting and ultimately a thrilling mind-bender. Finished in black and white, it’s an homage to films of the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the shadow of the Cold War and giant technological leaps of the era inspired imaginings of an unpredictable future.

Sweetheart has toured extensively on the international festival circuit and has screened on every continent barring Antarctica. It has won awards including a Special Jury Prize at the Kansk International Video Festival, Siberia and caught the attention of executives at Warner Brothers and Fox International. The film has been referenced in a series of European academic papers on South African and African genre fiction. 

Sweetheart on Facebook.
Photography by Richard Keppel Smith. 

Starring - Inge Beckmann - Anthony Oseyemi - Andre Weideman

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