State of Violence

Crime Thriller

Cast:
Fana Mokoena (Generations, The Lab)
Presley Chweneyagae (Tsotsi)
Neo Ntlatleng (Soul City)
Mary Twala
Vusi Kunene (Soul City)

Tagline

The past is not another country.

Logline

When the wife of a successful black businessman with roots in the struggle against apartheid is murdered by a young stranger who knows his name, he has to go back into his own past to find the answers that will lead him to the killer. But when he finds him and the reasons for the murder, will vengeance still be possible?

Synopsis

The film tells a story of a man who has gained the world but lost his soul. A man who, like the biblical figure Saul, is struck by lightning and his journey changes. He was blind and deaf, and slowly, as he goes on the journey, he begins to see and hear.

Bobedi, our protagonist, has lived in denial and refuses to acknowledge his past. So far it has worked for him. Memory and the past frighten him. OJ is a symbol of that memory, because by attacking Bobedi and killing his wife, he is a symbol that represents his past.

Bobedi does not only want to kill OJ because he killed Joy, but more importantly, because OJ forces him to engage and acknowledge his past. Bobedi wants to kill OJ so he can kill his past. What OJ does, that he is not aware of, is that by killing Joy, the sacrificial lamb, he is actually helping Bobedi to regain his soul.

The film is really about men: two generations of men who cannot articulate their emotions, who don’t take responsibility for the lives of others, and use violence as a way of resolving issues. But ultimately both learn about forgiveness.

Bobedi is a walking ghost. He is a man without a shadow. His shadow grows as he finds himself.

During Bobedi’s pursuit of OJ, he realises that OJ is him when he was young – representing all his angst and pain. He recognizes that if he forgives OJ, he may, in fact, be forgiving himself.