Award-winning South African film-maker and activist Weaam Williams has a new movie and local audiences will love it.
Two Hues premiered at the 41st Durban International Film Festival last week.
The short film is Weaam’s first fiction directorial project and first on-screen acting role, after many years of drama training, performance poetry and live art in theatre.
She also wrote the screenplay.
Two Hues is co-directed with Dominique Roxanne Josie, whose work includes Rooilug and Danz (kykNet).
Two Hues is a psychological drama and an exploration of the artistic nature of a manic depressive.
Natasa, played by Weaam, is a bipolar photographer, and a silent rape survivor who lives with her parents.
She is pressured by her family to marry and wear a hijab while at work at an advertising agency where women’s bodies are used to sell products.
Natasa only displays her strong, positively energised self at work. However, when alone, her deep-seated depression surfaces.
The film explores the ambiguous identity of Muslim women living in a Western context and is set in Cape Town.
Natasa’s deep-seated emotional trauma and her silence around it is interconnected to her mental chemical imbalance and emotional see-sawing.
Two Hues asks questions around women’s survival and equity, in the workplace and family, within a society deeply patriarchal in its construct.
It also stars Abduragman Adams, Abidah Dixon Mohamed and Khalil Kathrada.
You can watch the 15-minute short film for free by visiting www.durbanfilmfest.com/film/two-hues.