Having gained international recognition for his first film, 'Thina Sobabili', it's clear that Ernest Nkosi has begun his directing career the way he means to continue: by making films that matter In 1993, an eight-year-old called Ernest Nkosi went to see Sarafina! at the Paragon cinema in Katlehong, the East Rand township in which he was born and raised. It was the only film he ever saw with his parents, who died a few years later. He had seen movies before, but this one was different."It was the first movie I'd seen where the people looked like me and spoke like me, and the locations looked like places I knew. My mom cried and she was happy, and I didn't understand because I'd never seen a movie in a South African context. Afterwards I went to the front of the cinema and waited, because I thought these people who spoke like me were going to come out of the screen. My mom had to drag me away. She kept saying, 'It's a movie, it's a movie'. That stuck with me - oh, it's a movie - and ever since then I have never wanted to do anything else but make movies."That dream informed everything Nkosi did. His sporting ability won him a scholarship to Jeppe High School. "My goal was always just film, film, film, so I made sure my grades were really good." He was awarded a grant to study in the US, then returned to South Africa and completed his degree at Johannesburg's AFDA film school.The independent, self-funded film Thina Sobabili (watch the trailer below), which Nkosi wrote, produced and directed, is for his Master's thesis. Earlier this year it won the Audience Choice Award at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, and it is about to be released on general circuit in South Africa.story_article_left1Getting the film made and then trying to get it seen has been a long and arduous process that has left Nkosi on an exhausted high. He is a thoughtful man with a gentle voice and magnificent dreads. When moved beyond words he raises hands and eyes and emits an emotional "aaah"."You get one chance to make your first film," he says. "You have to make it count."Thina Sobabili ("the two of us") tells the story of teenager Zanele (played by Busisiwe Mtshali) and her protective older brother Thulas (Emmanuel Nkosinathi Gweva). Nkosi says their dynamic is "a little ode to myself and my sister. We were split up after our parents died and I didn't see her for 15 years, so I've always had that - aaah - situation. Now that she's moved back to Joburg, we are trying to build a relationship."In the film, Zanele is charmed by a sugar daddy (Richard Lukunku), a phenomenon that angers Nkosi. He became more aware of this scourge when he and his partners, while raising money for their feature, made financial literacy films that were shown to teenagers."Some of these kids would ask: 'Why don't you make movies about us?' And we'd hear their stories, and the one thing that kept coming up was sugar daddies. It's sort of a taboo: you see it, and everybody gives a bit of a giggle, haha, but it's deeper than that. I told myself if there was going to be a first film we'd make, this was it."He found a 19-year-old girl willing to share her story. "She was dating a dude of 55 - no love involved, just an opportunity to get out of her situation."full_story_image_hleft1The desire to get away lies at the heart of Nkosi's film, and is the reason he set it in Alexandra."I always wanted to get out of Katlehong and it stayed with me, that sense of needing to escape. Alex works for the film because it is only a kilometre from Sandton, but so far away in other terms. The highway literally divides the haves and the have-nots. The sugar daddies that make it in Sandton come across the highway to exploit the girls and then go back again."In Alex you have people looking at Sandton, going: 'There is my dream, if I work hard enough, if I do this, if I go out with him...' Zanele has a crazy dream of being an air hostess, but how would she even begin to realise this? A lot of young black people feel that - aaah - that frustration. The world surrounds them but they are in this little pocket and can't get out."story_article_right2Sandton's glittersticks loom over Alex, but no frame in Thina Sobabili shows the skyscrapers, because Nkosi wanted the audience to be immersed in a cut-off world."The only landscapes and wides you see are of the township. I wanted people to feel the claustrophobia of being stuck there, to be trapped inside this world that most would normally drive around."It's also why the dialogue is in Zulu with English subtitles. A non-Zulu speaker will miss some of the nuances, but the emotional subtext is universal. In one scene, Zoleka (Zikhona Sodlaka) sits at her dressing table thinking of her children, and it is impossible not to feel her pain. Nkosi calls this an example of the "common moment" he likes to chase."Everybody wakes up, you take a shower and you sit in front of the mirror getting yourself ready, and that's where you have a view into you. That's the first time you see Zoleka, and I wanted the audience to try to understand a mother that neglected her kids, by looking in her eyes and seeing her emotional turmoil. It's quite a private moment. That scene was three-and-a-half minutes long, and everyone said cut it, cut it. But no - if that didn't work, nothing else about her would work, because you would rubbish her as a character, as a mom. That emotion was important. You have to really feel her. I like those individual moments." Nkosi ignores snappy contemporary devices designed to hold an audience's attention. There is nothing of the fast-paced thriller about his film. It is in some aspects more like a play, with long scenes of intense feeling underpinned by Mpho Nthangeni's searing, melancholy soundtrack. This puts the focus on the splendid cast to reveal the story not through exposition but through expression. "I was very lucky with the actors," says Nkosi.His favourite scene is the one in which Zanele sends her first text to the sugar daddy. She is on her own, cringing with embarrassment and excitement. Anyone who has ever been a teenager will recognise her jittery mix of joy and terror. "She is looking for assurance from her little teddy bear," says Nkosi. "Playing with her toy while she toys with her future."He is fond of visual metaphors. When Zanele confides a painful secret to her friend, we see a woman hanging up washing, alluding to the airing of dirty laundry. When Zoleka decides to mend her life, a cutaway shows a township tailor sewing. In one of the most visceral asides, a cat chews its way through a dead rat. This was a lucky shot in that the cat happened to be there, says Nkosi, but he knew exactly where to place it. "You see that scene before the sugar daddy comes in. It's a metaphor for the fat cats feeding on the 'hood rats."story_article_left3Despite its literary motifs, the film does not flinch from raw agony. A scene of relentless emotional and physical abuse has the audience almost retching for it to stop: when will it end, make it go away... which is exactly what the woman in that situation would be feeling, says Nkosi.An equally difficult scene for him to make involved a baby, meant to be the young Zanele. The implication is that she has been abused, and that Thulas, then a toddler, has watched with impotent rage and sorrow from his hiding place in a wardrobe. The adult Thulas has recurring nightmares about this incident, and it drives his obsessive need to protect Zanele from all harm."No babies were harmed," says Nkosi, "but that scene was hard. My art director [Sarah Payne], bless her heart, walked off set and told me exactly what she thought of me. That was two takes, I couldn't do more."The baby, his neighbour's child, was "a beaut. She was amazing. As soon as you put her down she would cry because she likes being held. I literally put her down, action, got the shot, then picked her up and she was fine. But that scene was quite - aaah - for me, you know, a baby crying, the emotion on set... everybody was crying."He makes no apology for the tragic nature of the film. "People would ask: 'Why don't you make a romcom? Why another sad story?' But for me, coming from where I come from, and being aware of the opportunities I was afforded, and how many other people I grew up with weren't afforded the same opportunities, I was always going to hold a mirror up to society and try to reflect my community. I feel like it's the only thing I can give back. It's the one thing I'm good at, and I must use it to tell the story of people like me."full_story_image_hleft2Seeking financial backing for a newcomer's tragic script was another story. No one would take their calls ("We couldn't catch a bad habit") so Nkosi and his business partners (Enos Manthata, Mosibudi Pheeha and Mpho "Popps" Modikoane, who also plays Thulas's friend Mandla in the film) saved every cent they made from corporate videos, music videos and comedy events, until they had enough for a seven-day shoot."Everyone on the crew was under 30, working on their first feature film. We did it. We broke every labour law - but the baby only worked for an hour. My art director would have killed me otherwise."Finishing the film was just the start. The next obstacle was attracting an audience. When Thina Sobabili played at last year's Durban International Film Festival, only a handful of viewers attended the screening."That could easily have broken us," says Nkosi, "but then we thought, OK, if we are going to get this movie seen in SA then we need to do well overseas, because South Africans will watch a movie that has done well internationally. So we sent out screeners and entered every festival we could find. We won awards in LA and New York and we are about to do a big premiere in Montreal. That has given me the encouragement to think that my ideas are validated."Over the past month, free screenings have been held for thousands of high-school students in South Africa, many experiencing their first film in a cinema, and the validation Nkosi received from these audiences left him reeling."Established audiences are more reserved: it's hard to tell if they like it. In townships they react more - aaah - more emotional, they get up and shout and cheer. There's nothing like it, to see something you wrote move people like that. Kid cinema is my favourite: you know if it's a hit because they tell you immediately."story_article_right4After seeing those reactions, Nkosi says it would be a travesty not to make another film. He has two projects lined up, one a coming-of-age movie set in the proud male world of musangwe (Venda fist-fighting); the other a tragic love story set in the Eastern Cape. International recognition for Thina Sobabili might make it easier for him to fund the next one, but he's not about to submit to anyone else's rules for financial success."I want to make real, authentic stories - I'd love them to make tons at the box office, but most importantly they must make a difference. I don't want to make formula films. I want to make films that matter."The importance of his film was evidenced at question-and-answer sessions after the screenings. "Our kids deal with a lot," says Nkosi. There was also an interested audience on set."I had a dream of being a filmmaker, and I was one of the lucky ones, but I never had an encounter like that... seeing an entire young production crew, having them talk about opportunities in film... it opens up something. I've taken on three kids that I'm mentoring as writers, just because they showed so much interest. Having a kid ask me, 'How do you do that?' made me see myself, that kid watching Sarafina!"With his first film, the kid who watched Sarafina! has fulfilled his wish to make people come out of the screen. And he's going to keep doing it.'Thina Sobabili' is in cinemas on Friday, July 31 2015.To tell us what you think of the film, e-mail lifestyle@sundaytimes.co.za..