Written, directed, financed and produced by women, the somewhat controversial “The World Unseen” is an Enlightenment Productions Film in association with DO Productions. Producer Hanan Kattan, co-founder of UK’s Enlightenment Productions with Shamim Sarif, and co-producer Brigid Olen, co-founder of SA’s DO Productions with Marlow de Mardt, have teamed up on this project
“Since we founded DO Productions we have consistently sought out quality stories, with edge, in which to invest,” says Olen, who was SA co-producer on Disgrace starring John Malkovich.
When Sarif’s novel The World Unseen first hit the shelves it took the publishing world by storm and went on to win the Pendelton First Novel Award and the prestigious Betty Trask Award, garnering significant acclaim from the critics.
The World Unseen takes place in the 1950s in and around Pretoria, South Africa – just as apartheid is beginning to take root, enforcing heinous laws such as the Group Areas Act, and the Immorality Act. It is this atrocious setting that provides the dramatic backdrop of an unlikely and unusual love story of two young Indian women; one emancipated and free-willed, the other a traditional wife and mother. Violating the constraints of her own conventional Indian community, and the new apartheid government, Amina runs a café “unlawfully” with a “coloured” business partner. This is a secret she manages to keep well guarded from the police, but provokes prying by her judgemental community.
When Miriam meets Amina, their unexpected attraction pushes Miriam to question the rules that have shaped her life. The World Unseen embraces the universal themes of personal quest in an environment of deep-rooted suppression in a country of oppression, both obstacles transcended by the equality a love affair can bring.
The international cast is headed up by Lisa Ray, (Water - which picture garnered Best Foreign Picture Academy Award nomination in 2006). Her performance in Water earned her the Best Actress Award from the Vancouver Film Critics Circle.
Other cast includes Sheetal Sheth (Looking for Comedy in the Moslem World), Parvin Dabas (Monsoon Wedding), Bernard White (The Matrix) and Nandana Sent. Among the South African cast are Grethe Fox, David Dennis, Natalie Becker, Rajesh Gopie and Colin Moss.
The production is independently financed by private equity, and Katherine Priestley and Lisa Tchenguiz Imerman serve as executive producers.
Sarif’s motion picture debut “I Can’t Think Straight” – which she wrote and directed - will be released early next year.
