A GROUP of top Pretoria advocates have done it again – exchanging their robes for a while and bringing some of Hollywood to South Africa.
Bosbok 6 Films is producing its latest movie family drama – Free State – which is expected to be a box office hit at movie theatres next year. The film is expected to be released in India in January next year and around April in South Africa.
Free State is yet another work of producers, including well-known senior advocates Piet de Jager, Rian Strydom, Jaap Cilliers and Stef Guldenpfenning, of Pretoria Bar.
The group have proved in the past that they are not only some of the country’s leading legal eagles, but they thoroughly understand the film industry. They have produced four leading films in the past, with Free State being their fifth.
They have placed the South African film industry on the international map and one of their films, Roepman, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. They are expected to even go bigger this time.
International renowned model and actress Nicola Breytenbach, who is South African-born and now lives in New York, plays a leading role in the feature film. She was in South Africa to shoot the film, which took about four and a half months.
Breytenbach is leaving the country on Wednesday to head back to the US.
Sarafina star Leleti Khumalo also stars in the film, as does well-known Bollywood star Mangesh Desai.
Afrikaans heart-throb Bobby van Jaarsveld also features in the film.
Sallas de Jager, Piet de Jager’s son, wrote and produced Free State, which was filmed in Laudium, Fordsburg in Joburg, Memel in the Free State and Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal. The film is a story about Jeanette, played by Nicola, a soon to be engaged Afrikaans girl, who falls in love with a carefree Indian man in 1970s South Africa, where it was against the law to have inter-racial relationships.
Sallas explains that what will make the film stand out is the visual contrast of the two worlds in which the story is set. “Not only will this film tell the story of families of different races, but at its core also lies the world of two families devoted to different religions – Christianity and Hinduism,” he said.
The film will be released in English, Hindi and Afrikaans.
Pretoria News