BLACK BUTTERFLIES, scripted by Greg Latter, took the main prize at the Dutch national film awards, the Golden Calves, on Friday night. The South African set drama won best film, as well as receiving the best actress award for Carice van Houten's performance as poet Ingrid Jonker (following on from her win at the Tribeca Film Festival), and the award for best editing.
BLACK BUTTERFLIES, directed by Paula van der Oest, is the story of Ingrid Jonker, the women hailed as the South African Sylvia Plath. Greg's script is set in 1960s Cape Town, as a young Jonker discovers her creative voice amid the stifling atmosphere of apartheid and the overbearing eye of her rigid father, a government censorship minister (played by Rutger Hauer). As tensions rise, Ingrid witnesses an unconscionable event that will determine the route of both her creative and personal life.
You can watch the trailer here.
Greg Latter is a prolific screenwriter whose films have won awards at film festivals throughout the world. His next project, NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON, is currently in pre-production and due out in 2013. He currently resides in Knysna, South Africa.
Praise for BLACK BUTTERFLIES:
One of Sound On Sight's Five Films to Watch from Tribeca Film Festival: 'As a woman governed by equal parts genius and mercurial gloom, Jonker could inspire passion but never, it seems, love-a sad truth critically conveyed by van Houten. Jonker's inner turmoil mirrored her country's upheaval, but van der Oest is never heavy-handed with her parallels of the poet and the South African maelstrom happening around her: The relationships in the film are a lens through which to view a cultural zeitgeist, but the people always have center stage, not the politics.'
One of indieWIRE's 'Ten Films iW is excited about at Tribeca.'
'Van Houten (Black Book) is marvellous to watch, a tough, passionate whirlwind of an actress who summons the steely verve of a Judy Davis. She gives real backbone to the familiar arc of the self-destructive artist pushing against the social constraints of her time (South Africa in the Apartheid clampdown of the 1960s) while engaging in turbulent relationships with difficult lovers and a repressive politico father who, in horrific irony, was South Africa's censorship chief.' -- GreenCine Daily