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"Pushed, provoked and desperate she will do anything to get her family back." Netflix has revealed the full-length official trailer for a series called Unseen from South Africa. Available to stream worldwide later in March. Who is Zenzi Mwale? Netflix's new six-part crime thriller Unseen narrates the story of a nondescript domestic worker who goes on a desperate search for her missing husband, and along the way she comes up against powerful and violent criminals. Her reaction to the immense and immediate danger she faces is not as timid as she seems. Starring Gail Mabalane as Zenzi Mwale, the series includes an impressive list of South African actors such as Rapulana Seiphemo, Vuyo Dabula, Colin Moss, Shimmy Isaacs, and Dineo Langa. This looks like it might be a good series, though the music choice for this trailer is a bit odd considering the dark mood and intensity of everything happening.

South African *neo-noir* thriller How To Steal 2 Million, a film we've been following for about 2 years now, as it traveled the international film festival circuit, winning acclaim along the way, is now available to USA audiences via iTunes, and you're encouraged to take a look at it. A quick recap... Directed by Charles Vundla, the film stars Menzi Ngubane, Rapulana Seiphemo, Terry Pheto, Hlubi Mboya and John Kani. Kani might be the most familiar to those in the west. A veteran actor of stage and screen, as well as a writer in his own right, Kani's resume includes parts in The Ghost And The Darkness, and Sarafina, as well as alongside Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler in...

South African *neo-noir* thriller How To Steal 2 Million, a film we've been following for about 2 years now, as it traveled the international film festival circuit, winning acclaim along the way, will now be available to USA audiences via iTunes, starting on June 4 - just next week! A quick recap... Directed by Charles Vundla, the film stars Menzi Ngubane, Rapulana Seiphemo, Terry Pheto, Hlubi Mboya and John Kani. Kani might be the most familiar to those in the west. A veteran actor of stage and screen, as well as a writer in his own right, Kani's resume includes parts in The Ghost And The Darkness, and Sarafina, as well as alongside Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler in...

From the team that brought us the dramedy, White Wedding, South Africa’s 2010 Best Foreign Film Oscar entry, which I still have yet to see (but will later today)… director Jann Turner, and stars Kenneth Nkosi and Rapulana Seiphemo.

This next film, described as an action/comedy, is titled Paradise Stop.

Its synopsis reads: “… a clean cop on a backwater beat discovers that the man behind a series of freeway heists is also his only friend in town, the owner of the Paradise Truck Stop.”

It premiered in South Africa on March 9th, with an official theatrical debut scheduled for March 25, 2011. No word on whether it’ll travel west though. However, since White Wedding had a run in the USA and is now available on home video/VOD, Paradise Stop might as well.

Watch the series of videos below, including, first the trailer, followed by a scene from the film,...

Tsotsi (2005) Direction: Gavin Hood Cast: Presley Chweneyagae, Mothusi Magano, Terry Pheto, Jerry Mofokeng, Nambitha Mpumlwana, Rapulana Seiphemo Screenplay: Gavin Hood; from Athol Fugard's novel Oscar Movies, European Film Award Movies Recommended with Reservations Presley Chweneyagae, Tsotsi Mostly spoken in Tsotsi Taal, or "gangster dialect," Tsotsi is the tale of a Johannesburg shantytown hoodlum nicknamed Tsotsi, or "Thug," who rediscovers his humanity after accidentally kidnapping an infant during a carjacking. The premise, of course, is totally absurd* (see below). Director-writer Gavin Hood's screenplay — based on Athol Fugard's significantly more downbeat Apartheid-era novel — never convincingly explains why the brutal, heartless Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) would want to keep the child. True, the baby is a reminder of his long-buried childhood — he had lost his mother to AIDS and had suffered at the hand of his alcoholic father — but by keeping the baby Tsotsi is putting his own life at risk...

Hitting movie theaters this weekend:

From Prada to Nada – Camilla Belle, Alexa Vega, Kuno Becker (limited)

The Mechanic – Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland

The Rite – Colin O’Donoghue, Anthony Hopkins, Ciarán Hinds

Movie of the Week

The Mechanic

The Stars: Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Donald Sutherland

The Plot: An elite hit man teaches his trade to an apprentice who has a connection to one of his previous victims.

The Buzz: Jason Statham is kind of cookie cutter, and this looks to be just another of his many action extravaganzas, but he does turn in some good work from time to time. Death Race, for instance, was good, and I enjoyed the first Transporter too. Ben Foster has been on the rise now for quite some time — I imagine a few years from now he’ll be knocking on the door of the household name. I enjoyed him a lot in Pandorum,...

Director Ralph Ziman takes us behind-the-scenes of this amazing South African crime thriller

The amazing South African crime drama Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema is finally coming to DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, September 28th. Directed by Ralph Ziman, this intense tale proves to be an unflinching look into the crime, corruption and the transgressions of those looking to survive in the most crime-infested district of Johannesburg.

Compared to classics such as Scarface and Goodfellas, the movie follows young Lucky Kunene (Rapulana Seiphemo) who quickly graduates from small smash and grabs and petty crimes to more aggressive heists, such as armed robbery and carjacking. Soon, Lucky realizes he needs a bigger score to fulfill his goals of making it big, and escaping from the slums, to a dream house by the sea. It's a provocative look at the fifteen-year dissolution of Apartheid, and it has resonated with audiences and critics across the globe.

This is a gentle comedy as much about friendship as it is about romantic relationships. “White Wedding” follows Elvis (writer-producer Kenneth Nkosi) and Ayanda (Zandile Mstuwana) as they stumble toward the altar. The weekend gets off to a rough start when Elvis flies into Johannesburg and misses his connecting bus. He’s late for his own bachelor party, from which his best friend Tumi (writer-producer Rapulana Seiphemo) is too hung over to pick him up. Their journey — and their friendship — only gets rockier from there, involving vandalized vehicles, missed turns and vague directions, an obstinate grandmother and a stinky goat, a broken axle, and an Afrikaner bar where the two black guys and the white girl they picked up along the way are most unwelcome.

Meanwhile, in Cape Town, Ayanda and her pink-shirted wedding planner are struggling to put the final touches on the titular nuptials, a modern ceremony that offends her mother.

There's free-spirited bad-taste fun in Kick-Ass, while Holly Grainger and Thomas Turgoose impress in The Scouting Book for Boys

While comic-book non-hero Scott Pilgrim battles his heartthrob's evil exes in cinemas in Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Kick-Ass (2010, Universal, 15)

posits another bona-fide dweeb entering a colourfully costumed fantasy world on an extras-packed DVD. Snappily adapted from Mark Millar and John Romita Jr's strip by screenwriter Jane Goldman and director Matthew Vaughn (who previously teamed up on the touching fantasy Stardust), this follows the misadventures of wannabe crime buster Dave Lizewski, aka Kick-Ass (Aaron Johnson), who becomes strangely immune to pain after getting his head very publicly kicked in. An overnight internet sensation, the hapless anti-hero soon finds himself outclassed by Hit-Girl (Chloe Moretz), a firebrand young crime-fighter with a flick-knife, a filthy mouth, and a deadly way of dispatching bad guys learned from her fat-Batman father Big Daddy (Nic Cage,...

Everyone loves a wedding, which is what makes it such a universal and relatable topic for a romantic comedy. From classic movies like My Best Friend's Wedding and The Wedding Singer to smash hits like Wedding Crashers and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, everybody understands the craziness that surrounds the big day. So it only makes sense that eventually there would be a movie from South Africa that would accurately represent the chaos that is associated with their ceremonies and customs. White Wedding, which opens in theaters on September 3rd, follows the story of a young groom (Kenneth Nkosi, District 9) and his best man (Rapulana Seiphemo, Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema) who become lost on their way to the wedding and run into a young English doctor played by Jodie Whittaker (Venus). We recently had a chance to sit down with Nkosi and Seiphemo to discuss the new movie, their friendship...

I learned several things about South Africa in "White Wedding," an entertaining but forgettable comedy about two men and one woman roadtripping from Johannesburg to Cape Town, but the most interesting fact I discovered was that their films are just as susceptible to cliches as their American counterparts. The accents may change, but the stereotypes of roadtrip and wedding movies remain exactly the same: the traditional parents who clash with their forward-thinking children, the crotchety old relative with weird superstitions, the effeminate wedding planner, the bride who has to choose between love and security, the woman who misinterprets a man's bad luck as a fear of commitment. Since "White Wedding"'s ultimate lesson is one of universality, this choice is weirdly appropriate. We all want love. We all fear commitment. We all like reassuringly familiar narratives that juxtapose literal journeys of low-stakes danger with metaphorical journeys of personal discovery.

And...

It’s in part from obstacles and issues we’ve confronted through our triangular, multi-cultural and multi-racial friendship that “White Wedding” comes.

“When we first saw you, we saw white!” Kenny and Raps confessed this to me midst gales of laughter about a year after we started working together on “Isidingo,” South Africa’s first post-apartheid soap. Kenneth Nkosi and Rapulana Seiphemo were acting on the series, I was one of the directors, and it was while we were toiling together in the soap mine that we became friends. Ours is a relationship of deep trust and loyalty, one of the most important in my life. More than a decade after that conversation about my whiteness, the three of us sat down together to write the script for “White Wedding.”

“White Wedding” is a comic, romantic take on people encountering one another with all their prejudices in play and being...

The South Africa in rookie director Jann Turner's White Wedding (select cinemas September 3) is not that of 2009's sci-fi District 9 (a USA/New Zealand/Canada/ South Africa co-production with a $30 million budget), Leonardo DiCaprio's Blood Diamond (a $100 million Hollywood release), or even that of the exquisite low-budget Tsotsi (a UK/South Africa production) which won the 2006 Oscar for best foreign film. (South Africa submitted White Wedding for the foreign film Oscar in 2009.) Below, Turner talks with Toh's Sophia Savage about how her "crazy, beautiful country" inspired the story, the country's modern identity after its history of "savage repression," and the challenges facing South African cinema. Q: How did your relationship with co-stars Rapulana Seiphemo and Kenneth Nksoi influence the story of White ...

ComingSoon.net has received an exclusive clip from White Wedding , an official Academy Award entry for South Africa that opens in theaters on September 3. The film marks Jann Turner's feature film directorial debut. In the romantic comedy, set in modern day South Africa and in Cape Town, the beautiful Ayanda (Zandile Msutwana) is just days away from achieving her lifelong dream: the perfect white wedding. The only problem is that her husband-to-be, the loyal, committed Elvis (Kenneth Nkosi) is 1800 kilometres away in Johannesburg. He sets off on Tuesday night by bus to Durban intending to connect with his childhood friend and best-man Tumi (Rapulana Seiphemo). But the plans start to go awry when Tumi doesn't show up at the bus station. Not an auspicious beginning, but this is just...

We have a brand new exclusive clip from the upcoming feature film White Wedding, which will arrive in theaters on September 3. Click on the video player below to watch this brand new clip from the film, which was shot and set in South Africa.

White Wedding: A Horrible Few Days

It's modern day South Africa and in Cape Town the beautiful Ayanda (Zandile Msutwana) is just days away from achieving her lifelong dream: the perfect white wedding. The only problem is that her husband-to-be, the loyal, committed Elvis (Kenneth Nkosi) is 1800 kilometres away in Johannesburg. He sets off on Tuesday night by bus to Durban intending to connect with his childhood friend and best-man Tumi (Rapulana Seiphemo). But the plans start to go awry when Tumi doesn't show up at the bus station. Not an auspicious beginning, but this is just the first in many comic and illuminating misadventures they meet along the way.

HollywoodNews.com: Keneth Nkosi’s latest film, “White Wedding,” has just released the official trailer for the film.

It’s modern day South Africa and in Cape Town the beautiful Ayanda (Zandile Msutwana) is just days away from achieving her lifelong dream: the perfect white wedding. The only problem is that her husband-to-be, the loyal, committed Elvis (Kenneth Nkosi) is 1800 kilometres away in Johannesburg. He sets off on Tuesday night by bus to Durban intending to connect with his childhood friend and best-man Tumi (Rapulana Seiphemo). But the plans start to go awry when Tumi doesn’t show up at the bus station. Not an auspicious beginning, but this is just the first in many comic and illuminating misadventures they meet along the way. In the end, the two lovers learn that celebrating their union is more about the journey than getting to the church on time.

“White Wedding” marks...

Predators (15)

(Nimród Antal, 2010, Us) Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Topher Grace, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Trejo. 107 mins.

Twenty-three years and three sequels after the original, the sub-Alien sci-fi movie at last gets a proper follow-up, and even if Brody barely has the bulk to fill one of Schwarzenegger's combat boots, this serves up the semi-guilty action pleasures you'd demand. Brody is one of a gang of random human badasses who wind up in a strange jungle and realise they're now training material for apprentice alien badasses. So who will survive to be the, er, worst ass?

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (12A)

(David Slade, 2010, Us) Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner. 124 mins.

Another teen-conquering exercise in sexless erotica, but at least there's an actual film around it this time. A new vampire threat and Bella's love triangle won't be enough to entice newcomers, but fans will enjoy the unconsummated fantasy thrills they crave.

This gangster thriller set in modern-day Johannesburg looks initially promising, but loses its way when tries to tackle complex moral issues, says Peter Bradshaw

Ralph Ziman's flashy gangster thriller, set in post-apartheid Johannesburg, begins strongly and seems at first like a plausible South African version of Goodfellas or Scarface or City of God – or at least a movie to compare with Bronwen Hughes's South African thriller Stander. But sadly things unwind and the movie loses power with covert special pleading for the wiseguy protagonist, who is supposed to be morally superior to obviously vindictive white cops or evil drug dealer rivals. Lucky Kunene is a carjacker-turned-property-racketeer who exploits poor black tenants in Jo'burg's shabby housing blocks, scheming rent-strikes and squat-takeovers against nervy white landlords. He claims to be a Robin Hood hero working outside the law, admiring Al Capone and Karl Marx (he actually reattributes Proudhon's maxim "property...

Director Ralph Ziman takes a fascinating look at violence in Johannesburg in this new urban gangster film

Writer/director Ralph Ziman's latest film, Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema, which opens in theaters on June 11th is an intriguing and remarkable look at the violence and corruption that affects the most crime-infested district in Johannesburg. The film follows the rise and fall of South African gangster Lucky Kunene (Rapulana Seiphemo) who eventually graduates from petty crime to more aggressive heists like armed robbery and carjacking. In order to realize his dream of a house by the sea, Lucky hatches an elaborate and violent plan to make his fortune hijacking buildings from landlords of Johannesburg tenements by convincing the tenants to let him hold their rent hostage from the landlords. His high-profile real estate acquisitions attract the attention of the police, as well as escalating a war between local drug lords. Things get...

It was a matter of time before someone invented Sollywood, but making only positive films is an artistic straitjacket

There's Hollywood, and Bollywood, and Nollywood (Nigeria's nascent film industry), so perhaps it was only a matter of time before someone invented Sollywood. This is the name of what aspires to be a new movement in film-making in South Africa.

The Sollywood website sets out an agenda that includes: making films on topics important to the South African community, making movies that end on a positive note for the community and the African people and, in capital letters, "Make Africans Feel Good About Being Africans".

Last week I caught the first Sollywood offering, Ingxoxo: The Negotiation – a romantic comedy but not as Richard Curtis would know it. The plot turns on the African custom of lobola, in which the family of a bride is compensated for her loss with a payment,...