The Ugu Film Festival will be held at the Margate Hotel in Port Shepstone from 24 to 26 January 2020. This year's festival is focusing on female filmmaking in South Africa in the theme of "Through the Lenses of South African Women" and will open with a special screening of an award-winning South African film titled Uncovered, directed by Zuko Nodada.

Noteworthy films

Uncovered

Palace of Bone

Zulu Return

Budhha In Africa

Spookie Kom Huis Toe

Forest Drive

Besides the plethora of films, aspiring filmmakers and participants can look forward to engaging and gaining skills from amongst others award-winning South African actor Menzi Ngubane (Kwakhala Nyonini, Generations, Isibaya); international star Simon Kook, who continues to mesmerise the global film industry with his action films; Peter Pham from Vietnam; Patrick Garcia from Act Films; and Gavin Potter (film music scorer).The communities based in the surrounding areas will be offered opportunities to learn about filmmaking, furthermore enjoy the films that have been scheduled to screen through the Outreach Programme the festival has planned. The Outreach Programme will be held at Izingolweni also in the South Coast.The only event of its kind in the district, the festival provides a vital local film development platform giving aspirant and up and coming filmmakers an opportunity to not only gain expert insight and exposure on the value chain of the industry, but also a chance to showcase their craft to potential investors, film enthusiasts and media.Uncovered is a film about a young driven, intelligent Aluta Ndlovu whose ambition to become CEO of a mining company (Shift Inc) clouds her judgment when her journalist sister Pumla Ndlovu informs her about possible corruption. Out of the blue, Frank Drake (Aluta’s boss) wants to sell a worthless mine to the people of Somkhele Village. It is only when Phumla dies that Aluta sees through Frank and figures out what he is up to which drives her to vengeance, not only for her sister’s death but also her people and her own life.The festival’s headliner will be Durban filmmaker Claire Angelique’s ground-breaking second feature film Palace of Bone. Angelique won the award for Young Artist of the Year (Film) for her feature debut My Black Little Heart at the National Arts Festival in 2010. With her prize money, she financed this micro-budget thriller about a girl who goes on a killing spree of all those who did her wrong. The film premiered at the 2011 National Arts Festival where eminent art critic Mary Corrigall selected the film as number three in her cultural highlights of the year.This daring filmmaker turns the culture of self-documentation on itself in this unique feature film – which plots a documenter’s attempt to discover the truth about a young woman she has filmed, who was alleged to have killed several people. In essence, the film is a retrospective view of footage re-edited by its creator, an amateur who hides behind the lens of a camera. She is an invisible witness who despite her scrutinising gaze was unable to really come to grips with the action she captured, the truth.In this way, the apparatus she was using to see was the impediment to seeing. Palace of Bones is a sophisticated and layered ‘indie whodunit’ that probes a debased and immoral society, where drug dealers marvel at the corruptible nature of the police.Zulu Return by KZN filmmaker Gugulethu is a fascinating documentation of American rap artist Afrika Bambaata, coming to South Africa to find his perceived African roots. The rap singer’s sometimes murky history in the music industry is not avoided and Gugulethu’s wonderful style takes the viewer on a fascinating journey sprinkled with sangomas, the ancestors and colonial history.Nicole Schafer’s Budhha In Africa is already creating a stir after screenings at Encounters Documentary Festival and the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) where it garnered awards at both locations. Documenting a Chinese Buddhist academy in Malawi where the methods are sometimes highly questionable and the issues of colonialism come up loud and clear. The director observes all these permutations with a distant but incisive eye. The film is up for consideration as a South African entry into the Oscar competition.Robin Burke’s Spookie Kom Huis Toe was premiered at DIFF in 2019. The young Pretoria director looks at her history as an Afrikaner with a critical and highly experimental eye. Already causing sometimes trenchant debate within the Afrikaans community, the film is a brave and unique statement.Cape Town filmmaker Uma Martinez’s independent short production Forest Drive is a structurally complex examination of death, loss and complicity that takes the breath away with its stylistic audacity. Martinez, a PHD in geological surveying, brings a very different eye to the filmmaking process.For the full festival schedule, visit www.uguff.org