Four young, South African friends on a camping trip on an isolated farm wake up to discover they've all swapped bodies. As they navigate a labyrinth of so-called Rainbow Nation politics, they capture their bizarre predicament in selfie videos - with hilarious and tragic results.
A group of young friends on a camping trip, deep in the South African countryside wake up to discover they've all swapped bodies ! Stranded in the wilderness, they'll have to navigate a personal-political labyrinth if their friendship and their lives are ever to be the same again.
A film by Jenna BASS
South Africa, 2017, Drama, 1h 11min, colour, English, 14A
NOTE BY THE PROGRAMMER Jenna Bass' second feature, High Fantasy, confirms the suggestion she is part of "the new wave of South African filmmaking." In following up her award-winning debut, Love The One You Love, Bass turns her camera - actually an iPhone, which she used to shoot the film - on four very different friends camping in the Northern Cape. From the get-go, their jovial antics are interspersed with cutting conversations about race, land claims, and gender relations. Against starkly beautiful desert landscapes, the group captures these debates on their phones (between performing party tricks and hitting joints). But when they wake up the next day, they've inexplicably swapped bodies. Now, the discussions from the day before take on painful, and potentially destructive, new meanings. High Fantasy reverberates with a powerful realness that is grounded by breakout performances from Qondiswa James, Liza Scholtz, Nala Khumalo, and Francesca Michel - all co-writers of the script. Their performances transcend clichés so often associated with asking questions about what it would mean to live in another's skin.
With a raw style that's part Blair Witch and part Tangerine, High Fantasy probes apartheid's still-unhealed wounds and challenges the platitudes of a promised peaceful future. KIVA REARDON, TIFF 2017, Toronto
Tags: Identity, Global Perspectives, Social Justice, Women In Film, SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN, Female Director, Drama
A movie created by Jenna Bass, Qondiswa James, Nalá Khumalo, Francesca Varre Michel and Liza Scholtz
Executive Producer Irshaad Ebrahim
Producers Jenna Bass, Steven Markovitz, David Horler
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