Claremont film-maker Meg Rickards directs the new local thriller, Snake.
Adapted from a novel by Tracey Farren, it tells the story of 10-year-old Stella, played by first-time actor Lamiyah Barnard, who lives with her family as squatters on a farm when a stranger, Jerry (Neels van Jaarsveld), appears and manipulates Stella to lie for him.
Stella’s father Frank (Keenan Arrison) is battling alcoholism while her mother Nancy (Tarryn Wyngaard) is balancing her life with being a mother.
Rickards says she wanted to do the film ever since reading the book in 2011.
While the movie is told from a child’s point of view, it is intended for an adult audience.
“To avoid a fake sense of naivety, I’ve tried to maintain a little detachment from the child’s subjective view of the world and to show how Stella sometimes bends the truth to her own ends,” says Rickards.
Snake is also a metaphor for the unresolved politics of land in the country, she adds.
“Land inequality is a ticking time bomb, on the forefront of the political landscape. It is not often that poor communities are portrayed in the mainstream media.”
The film, she says, puts a dispossessed rural community at its centre and shows its daily struggles like hard labour, crime and hunger.
Snake was shot last year for seven weeks on location in Atlantis, Malmesbury and the Philadelphia area.
Rickards previously directed the thriller, Atlantis, and the romcom, Kaalgat Karel.
Snake will have a limited release at Canal Walk’s Nu Metro cinema, from Friday May 3 to Thursday May 9. It will also stream on Amazon Prime and eVOD later in the year.
