Inspired by a real-life event, The Way Back is set to offer viewers a different perspective of the Cape Flats.
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Writer and director Imran Hamdulay told the Southern Mail that most of the film is shot in Ottery, where he says the story has its roots. ‘We were at my friend’s place braaiing and his son went missing and that was the seed of the film, and from that, I wrote the story. Although the film isn’t based on real life, I just took the incident as a catalyst and branched off from there.
‘It revolved around this specific male experience, Ryan’s difficult past and how hard he’s worked to overcome his past and [do] better, but when someone so close to him is almost lost, some parts of his past come out and he has to reconcile that, figure it out again and try to be better again.’
The Way Back is the second film that Hamdulay and producer Khosie Dali have worked on. The pair also created Sons of the Sea, which can be viewed on Showmax.
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Local actors Danny Moss, Melissa Mel de Vries and Roby Rossouw are part of the cast, and the production team spent three weeks shooting at different locations in Ottery, Simon’s Town, Wynberg and Grassy Park.
‘These areas are full of good and hard-working people so we approached it from a position of honesty, honesty and empathy. The areas we filmed in are beautiful, there’s texture and colour and we just want to see more of that in the films we present – hopefully that comes through in the movie,’ says Hamdulay.
‘Many of the films that come from the Cape Flats have a single-story narrative about gangsterism and drugs so we want to show a different side of the community through our lens.’
Brandon Eckardt, a community activist and CEO of the Life Changers Foundation, says the film explores friendship and mental health. ‘All films of the Cape Flats are about gangs and gangsterism, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing because those are real and it happens in our communities, but what influences people is what they see, and what we’ve seen over the years with these gang movies is that children and youngsters then glorify gangsters because they want to emulate what they see in those movies.
‘The lead character has a past; it creeps up [on] him, and his wife finds out about it, and I think that many people, especially men on the Cape Flats, will resonate with the storyline because we come from that.’
Ross, who spent the first few years of his life on the Cape Flats and has family living in the area, adds that the film shows the people of the Cape Flats in a different light. ‘It was beautiful being out in Ottery and how the community came together to support us in telling the story… It is going to be a beautiful story and I can’t wait for people to see it.’
The Way Back is scheduled to hit the big screens in April next year.
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Picture: Gordon Cowie / Unsplash