Krotoa, a feisty, bright, 11-year-old girl is removed from her close-knit Khoi tribe to serve Jan van Riebeeck, her uncle’s trading partner and the first Governor of the Cape Colony. She is brought into the first Fort established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652. There she grows into a visionary young woman who assimilates the Dutch language and culture so well that she rises to become an influential translator but ends up being rejected by her own people as she tries to bridge the gap between the two cultures about to collide.
Acting
Crystal-Donna Roberts carries colonial trauma in every glance.
Production
Painfully authentic 17th-century Cape Colony reconstruction.
Writing
Refuses easy heroes—everyone's complicit, everyone's wounded.
Director
Roberta Durrant
Armand Aucamp
Jan Van Riebeeck
Jacques Bessenger
Pieter Van Meerhof
Crystal-Donna Roberts
Krotoa
Roeline Daneel
Maria van Riebeeck
Brendon Daniels
Autshumato
Deon Lotz
Roelof de Man
Michael MacKenzie
French Dignitary
Marcel Van Heerden
Wagenaar
Lizette Van Der Merwe
Wife of Dutch dinner guest
Jessica Stanley
Roelof's Wife
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Krotoa was real: the first recorded Khoi to convert to Christianity, her actual Dutch name Eva became synonymous with 'traitor' in Afrikaans folklore.
Director Roberta Durrant spent 15 years developing this specifically because South African cinema had erased Krotoa's complexity, reducing her to either victim or villain.
US
