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Arts & Entertainment

Foreign Movie Matinee at the Library

Featured film: Tsotsi

Writer/director Gavin Hood, in adapting a sprawling novel by Athol Fugard, effectively fuses gangster-movie tropes to this powerful film, set in a South African township wracked by tribal violence. The title character, played as a young man by semi-professional actor Presley Chweneyagae, became a street thug after running away from a brutal father (Israel Makoe) and a mother (Sindi Shambule) dying of AIDS. Now an altogether ruthless gang leader, Tsotsi carjacks a middle-class black woman (Nambitha Mpumlwana), casually shoots her, and drives off, later discovering her baby boy in the backseat. On a whim, he begins caring for the child -- a process that helps mend his broken spirit and enables him to release the basic human values he has repressed in years of wanton savagery.

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