In the movie, a woman learns she has AIDS, then confronts her husband, a miner who beats her viciously but soon realizes he has the disease as well. Much of the rest of the film, which is powerfully acted and visually dramatic, is about the woman's struggle to ease her husband's final days and make certain that her child is able to continue in school.
Cuff said he intended to see it eventually, adding, "I don't want to be distraught just yet."
South African actors Kenneth Kambule, left, Lihle Mvelase and Leleti Khumalo in the Oscar-nominated film "Yesterday." Like many South African films, "Yesterday," a tale of a mother struggling with AIDS, was greeted with indifference and was pulled from the country's theaters after just a few weeks.
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South African films are often dismissed -- even by those in the industry -- as too political, too rooted in the nation's painful racial history or simply too sad. Such movies have limited appeal for South African audiences seeking escape from daily life, and producers said they have even less appeal for audiences internationally, where profits can be made.
South Africa has 46 million people, but only an estimated 5 million go to the movies regularly -- an audience too small to keep an expensive industry profitable. "Yesterday" was able to be produced, in large part, because of charitable backing by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which has made AIDS awareness a primary mission.
"There's a huge problem with audiences for homegrown products," said Key, the producer. "It kills me. Every time I see a South African script, it tends to be about the struggle [against apartheid]. . . . We have to get beyond that. We need to make films about everyday happiness and everyday people."
A small shift toward a larger and more diverse airing of South African films already may be underway. Ster-Kinekor says it plans to screen 11 locally produced films this year, the most ever and about double the number in most previous years.
Less noticed than the Oscar nomination for "Yesterday" has been another critical breakthrough for South African cinema. Last weekend, a retelling of the classic opera "Carmen," set in the hardscrabble Khayelitsha township outside Cape Town, won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Like "Yesterday," it was filmed in a tribal language -- Xhosa, the most commonly spoken language in Khayelitsha and the second-most-common tribal language nationwide. But unlike "Yesterday," the Carmen remake will not be offered first to the largely white audiences of mainstream cinemas.
Instead, the movie -- called by its Xhosa name "U-Carmen eKhayelitsha," meaning "Carmen in Khayelitsha" -- will debut in an auditorium in Khayelitsha and, later, in similar venues in townships across the country. The ticket price will be set low, at less than $2. Then, the movie will appear in traditional cinemas.
"We're just going to keep our fingers crossed that that's going to help," said the filmmaker, Mark Dornford-May, who is British but hired a South African cast for the movie. "If the film is attractive in terms of its history and language, if it's accessible . . . there should be a huge audience."
His goal for the project, which is underwritten by the fast-food chicken chain Nandos, is to have "U-Carmen eKhayelitsha" seen by 500,000 South Africans. That would be five times the number who saw "Yesterday" in local theaters -- and one-quarter the number who saw the most popular film ever shown in South Africa: "Titanic."
