South Africa and Canada / 2004 / 73mins / Documentary / English

The journey of Khalo Matabane, a young black filmmaker in search of his “promised land,” serves as an open forum for ordinary people to talk about their feelings and impressions of the new South Africa. Matabane, traveling with a hand-held camera throughout nine provinces, films entirely from the seat of a mini-bus taxi. The taxi also serves as an open forum for ordinary people to talk about their feelings on such controversial issues as land, race, language, globalization, democracy, identity and violence in the new modern South Africa, which broke away from apartheid in 1994. This story follows the format of talk radio and takes on the look of an adventurous road movie.

Khalo Matabane

Khalo Matabane is an award-winning director, writer, and producer whose filmography has brought him both national and international acclaim. His films about South Africa include Poetic Conversations (1996), a half-hour profile on the black consciousness poet Ingoapele Madingoane, Two Decades Still (1996), a look at the 1976 uprising in Soweto; The Waiters (1997), stories of hope about people waiting for lost family members to return; and Young Lions (1999), about three former youth activists. He has been invited to workshops and festivals around the world, and in 2004 he gave creative writing courses at the National Electronic and Media Institute of South Africa. Matabane has directed more than ten documentaries, a number of short films, and recently made his first feature. Matabane won the Lionel Ngakane Award for the most promising South African filmmaker. He was also awarded the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury for his film Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (2005), which also won the Best South African Feature Film at DIFF 2006. State of Violence (2010) is his second feature film and was screened at the Forum section during the 2011 Berlinale and The Number premiered at TIFF in 2017. Learn More