THE WORLD UNSEEN
United Kingdom-South Africa / 2007 / 104 minutes
Director: Shahim Sarif
Audience Award, Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
Best Director, World Cinema, Phoenix Film Festival
Based on the director's novel of the same name, the film is about racial tensions and Sapphic attraction under the apartheid regime in 1950s South Africa.
Free-spirited Amina (Shettal Sheth, right, above) has broken all the rules of her own conventional Indian community in South Africa by running a cafe, a safe haven of laughter, music and home-cooked food: a 'grey' area for those who fall outside the strict 'black and white' rules of the apartheid government.
Miriam (Lisa Ray, left, above), on the other hand, is a doting mother to her children and a demure and subservient wife to her chauvinistic, frustrated husband, Omar. Quietly intelligent, Miriam has never assumed that she may have choices in life.
When Miriam meets Amina, their unexpected attraction throws them both off balance.
Using the stunning South African landscape and jazz tunes of the time, The World Unseen explores a system that divides white from black and women from men, but one that might just allow an unexpected love to survive.
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