"Toorbos" explores the uprooting of a young forest woman and her community during the time of the last forest inhabitants of South Africa's Knysna forest of the 1930's.
Cinematography
Knysna forest shot like a living, breathing character.
Acting
Elani Dekker's wordless final scenes will haunt you.
Production
Painstaking recreation of a vanished community's world.
Director
Rene van Rooyen
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The film resurrects the forgotten 'forest people' of Knysna, descendants of Khoisan and mixed-race communities displaced by colonial logging and apartheid-era classification.
Director Rene van Rooyen cast local Knysna residents as extras, some with actual ancestral ties to the forest communities depicted — the final scene's mourners are mourning their own erased history.
US
