Hope Eternal

I saw this last month at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. This is basically a made for TV movie and I wouldn't expect it to have much chance in art house theatrical release. From writer/director Karl Francis this tells the story of Hope (Christine Rochart Genoud) who is Madagascan and works in an AIDS hospice in the Congo. She is a single mother to her daughter Bantu (Lusungu Munthali) and they live in a dangerous war-torn area of the country. Hope falls in love with Evan, a Wesh doctor (Richard Harrington) and they plan to get married and move to Wales. The story of war, love, sacrifice, human trafficking, art trafficking and rugby (yes, rugby) takes us from the Congo into Zambia and Wales and uses seven different languages throughout the film. This is a collaboration of the UK, Zambia, Congo, Zimbabwe and South Africa and was Zambia's official submission for consideration to the 81st Academy Awards for foreign language film. this film is pretty cluttered with too much going on yet it kind of drags along. It gets kind of silly and implausible at times and incorporates a weak script with some bad dialog. It's not totally hopeless though and I would give it a 6.0 out of 10.