by Thinus Ferreira
The searing South African film The Voice Behind The Wall by Gideon Breytenbach and Riku Lätti has won the 2023 Cannes Film Award for Best African Film at this international film festival which runs alongside the annual Cannes Film Festival which kicks off today.
The controversial 2022 documentary film, in Afrikaans known as Die Ongetemde Stem, is an unflinching examination of the Afrikaans music industry and the racial imbalances which continue to persist within this industry almost 30 years since the end of Apartheid, with the film that specifically exposes the erasure of the coloured contribution to Afrikaans culture.
The film already screened at kykNET's Silwerskermfees film festival in Camps Bay, the University of Stellenbosch's Woordfees, South Africa's Encounters documentary film festival, as well as Australia's Sydney Film Festival.
Gideon Breytenbach and Riku Lätti directed The Voice Behind The Wall which was written by Gideon Breytenbach and Jackie Lätti, with Churchill Naude, Anton Goosen, Frazer Barry, Deniel Barry, Schalk van der Merwe, David Kramer and Piet Botha who are some of the names appearing in the film.
The Voice Behind The Wall is noteworthy as the latest South African film winning an international accolade since South Africa's National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), responsible for choosing the country's entry to America's annual Academy Awards in the Best International Feature, said that no South African films were good enough to enter for 2023's Oscars since they all failed to depict minority groups adequately.
The decision, from a secretive and anonymous selection group appointed by the NFVF to choose South Africa's Oscar contender, angered and perplexed South African filmmakers who months later still haven't received any feedback or explanations from the NFVF about how their submitted films allegedly failed to "appropriately represent marginalised communities".
