Five Fingers For Marseilles wins big at Africa Movie Academy Awards

Locally made western Five Fingers For Marseilles has been racking up quite a lot of critical acclaim since its release earlier this year. A quick visit to either Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes shows that the film is receiving rave reviews internationally, with publications as varied as The Wall Street Journal, Variety and The New York Times posting glowing appraisals.

Now the film, directed by Michael Matthews has added a rather impressive list of awards to its tally. According to a report on Critical Hit, Five Fingers For Marseilles has scored big at the 14th Africa Movie Academy Awards held in Rwanda this year. Not only did the film walk away with Best Picture, it scored the AMAA 2018 Awards for Achievement in Production Design, Best First Feature Film by a director, Achievement in Cinematography, and the Ousmane Sembene AMAA 2018 Award for Best Film in an African Language.

When the film opened in April of this year, it made a significant debut at the box office by raking in more than R500 000 in ticket sales, outperforming past South African favourites in the action/crime/drama genres, with a showing that was 28 percent stronger than Inumber Number (2013), 31 percent stronger than Jerusalema (2008) and 34 percent higher than Noem My Skollie (2016), and 40 percent higher than Hard to Get (2014) on its opening weekend.

If you’re in the dark about the film’s plot, it centres on the remote town of Marseilles during the apartheid era. The town’s inhabitants are the victims of brutal police oppression and only the young “Five Fingers” are willing to stand up to them. Their battle is heartfelt but innocent, until hot-headed Tau kills two policemen in an act of passion. He flees, leaving his brothers and friends behind, but his action has triggered a conflict that will leave both Marseilles and the Five Fingers changed. Twenty years later, Tau is released from prison, now a feared and brutal outlaw, “The Lion of Marseilles.” But scarred and empty, he renounces violence and returns home desiring only to reconnect with those he left behind.

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