CAPE TOWN - In a comedy-drama with tragic undertones, Sodium Day tells the story of a neglected matric class in a dilapidated school on the Cape Flats. In the space of a single day, audiences witness how they navigate their way through absent teachers, racial tensions, a fellow student gone missing, and the threat of local gangsters.
Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Riaz Solker, Sodium Day features uncanny humour and absurd but often true-to-life scenarios and releases in cinemas nationwide on Friday, April 22.
The day abruptly begins with three pupils setting off an explosion with a chunk of sodium they stole from the science lab, much to the aggravation of their overwhelmed headmaster. The rebellious students are from Grade 12Y of John Shelby High School – the only class doing mathematics at a matric level. However, they do not currently have a maths teacher, and it is already September. Six woefully unqualified temps have come and gone during the year, leaving the learners hopelessly unprepared for the final exam, which is mere weeks away.
The class largely consists of disenfranchised students, and the latent racism that still exists in this environment often bubbles to the surface.
A newly qualified white substitute teacher, bright-eyed and unsuspecting, is thrust into the class of 12Y to teach maths, despite the fact that he arrived to teach history and English. As he fumbles his way through class, the mischievous and petulant nature of 12Y is revealed.
The day is further complicated by the arrival of a teacher and a group of students from a rich, upper-class private school, whose day-long visit is part of a cultural exchange programme that no one at the school was expecting.
“Sodium Day shines a spotlight on South Africa’s education system,” said Benjamin Cowley, CEO of Gravel Road Distribution Group.
“By Incorporating themes of inequality, educational difficulty, youthful ambitions, gang culture, and more, it peels back the curtain to show the complex realities faced by many learners in South Africa today,” he added.
Watch the trailer for Sodium Day here:
Cape Times