Cinema struggles to tell stories that reflect a contemporary Africa and remains hamstrung by self-serving voices

Elysium is today’s gross global inequality realised. By 2154, humanity is divided into the privileged and the masses on whose backs this is built.

In Proudly South African fashion, we note two Oscar nominations for films related to South Africa, <em>District 9</em> and <em>Invictus</em>.

South African blockbuster <i>District 9</i> has been nominated in the Best Motion Picture category at this year’s Oscars.

It’s often easy for South Africans to imagine they live in an alternative reality. Maybe that’s why <i>District 9</i> works so well.

A sci-fi blockbuster that’s also an allegory of apartheid? <i>District 9</i> is the biggest of a glut of films about South Africa’s traumatic past.

The marketing campaign for the sci-fi movie <i>District 9</i>, set in South Africa and opening here, was planned before the movie was even filmed.

If you follow all the rules, as <i>District 9</i> did, topping the box office is not necessarily a surprise.

District 9, a gritty, low-budget space alien movie set in South Africa with a cast of unknowns, has opened as Hollywood’s number one film.