LIFE, ABOVE ALL
Directed by Oliver Schmitz
Produced by Oliver Stoltz
Written by Dennis Foon & Schmitz, based on Allan Stratton’s novel Chanda’s Secrets
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
In Pedi with English subtitles
South Africa/Germany. 106 min. Rated PG-13
With Khomotso Manyaka, Lerato Mvelase, Aubrey Poole, Harriet Manamela & Keaobaka Makanyane

“It takes a village” can have positive connotations. But a small community with a rapidly expanding cemetery, beset by ignorance, poverty, and helplessness has a lot to fear, and is fertile territory for spreading rumors, sowing suspicion, and shunning suspected carriers of a terrifying, mysterious disease that none want to name.

If only Life, Above All was one of those familiar movie fantasies where all the grown-ups on a planet are struck by a mysterious force and heroic youngsters are left to create a new society on their own. Though set in unspecified sub-Saharan Africa in a time close to now, the devastation from AIDS sweeping through the population and the brunt of responsibility forced upon orphaned children is tragically real.

From the opening scene, 12-year-old Chanda (Khomotso Manyaka) has more to deal with than most schoolgirls her age elsewhere on this planet—she has to pick out the coffin for her baby sister. But her grief-stricken seamstress mother Lillian (Lerato Mvelase), who is overwhelmed by her own failing health, wants her to hide the death from her curious younger sister and brother. Chanda also has to track down her stepfather (Aubrey Poole) to where he’s out drowning his pains and sorrows with his drunken girlfriend. His shaky return for the funeral wake only exposes the family’s problems to their disapproving relatives and nosey neighbors when he shouts out accusations of his wife’s poisoned blood and milk.

Alternatively maternal and interfering, their busybody, more affluent neighbor Mrs. Tafa (Harriet Manamela) is protectively adamant that there be no mention of the possibility of AIDS afflicting the family. She even insists that her beloved son was accidentally killed in the big city, and not from the disease. She points to a ready target to warn Chanda about a bad example. Her Best Friend Forever Esther (a scrawny and heartbreaking Keaobaka Makanyane) dropped out of school when her parents died, and her younger siblings were unwillingly dispersed to various relatives. She is desperately trying to make money to reunite them, whatever way she can, including turning tricks with truckers.

Rather than focusing on the usual corrective lessons on the transmission and treatment of HIV/AIDS, the family’s struggles play out within systems of traditional care and limited modern medical facilities that are strained to the breaking point. Chanda rails against the stoic comforts of religion and receives only discouraging advice at an overcrowded clinic. Her illiterate and exhausted mother falls prey to the greed of a charlatan doctor, a demon exorcism, and horrific neglect by her revengeful sister, who has not forgiven Lillian for her flouting of tribal marriage traditions for the sake of love.

In sharpening the story from a young adult novel by Canadian author Allan Stratton (by lowering the children’s ages and giving them more natural interactions), the searing grimness is supported by recent documentaries on the ongoing AIDS scourge, such as Susan Koch’s The Other City (2010) from Washington, D.C. and Maggie Betts’s Zambia-set The Carrier, now making the festival rounds. Director Oliver Schmitz was South African born and raised there before establishing a TV career in Germany, and his choice to film in a township about 200 kilometers northeast of Johannesburg adds greatly to the film’s authenticity, plus dialogue almost entirely spoken in Pedi, one of the country’s official languages. While the adult actors are accomplished performers from South African theater and television, the young stars are so emotionally mature playing their aggrieved characters that it’s startling to see them briefly forget their troubles and happily smile at a dance. Chanda is almost too extraordinarily resourceful and heroic in managing her family’s crises and facing death. But her example finally inspires adults to face the truth and face down the fear as a first step in dealing humanely with the epidemic. Nora Lee Mandel
July 15, 2011