A South African spinster murders her father after he rapes the wife of the black foreman for his plantation.
Acting
Jane Birkin's volcanic restraint.
Direction
Hänsel's unblinking eye on atrocity.
Cinematography
Dust as character, suffocating everything.
Director
Marion Hänsel
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Adapted from J.M. Coetzee's 'In the Heart of the Country,' the film transplants his linguistic experiments into visceral image—Hänsel was criticized for softening the novel's radical narrative structure, but the physical violence lands harder onscreen.
Shot in Spain standing in for South Africa due to apartheid-era sanctions; the 'African' landscape is literally performed, layering fakery onto a story about performed gentility and hidden brutality.
FR
