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Regular
Price $14.98
Starring:
Harriet Lenabe,
Lihle Mvelase,
Kenneth Khambula,
Leleti Khumalo,
Camilla Walker,
Directed By:
Darrell Roodt,
Rated: R (Restricted)
Release Date: 2004
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Format:
Closed-captioned,
Color,
DVD-Video,
Widescreen,
NTSC,
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Editorial Reviews and
DVD Information about Yesterday
Description
After falling ill, Yesterday (Khumalo) learns that she is HIV positive. With her husband in denial and young daughter to tend to, Yesterday's one goal is to live long enough to see her child go to school. Set against the awesome, harsh landscapes of South Africa, Yesterday is an eloquent, unsentimental film that quietly builds an overwhelming emotional force
Amazon.com
As beautiful as it is heartbreaking, the Oscar®-nominated drama Yesterday brings an intimate human perspective to the AIDS crisis in Africa. On the surface, it's a harsh and devastating story about bad things happening to good people, but such a limited description robs the film of its warmth and tender compassion. Best known for his 1995 drama Cry the Beloved Country, director Darrell James Roodt returns to his native South Africa for this moving and heartfelt portrait of a young, devoted mother named Yesterday (played by Leleti Khumalo, from Hotel Rwanda) who learns that she is HIV positive, and remains determined to stay alive until her young daughter Beauty (Lihle Mvelase) is old enough to go off to school. Her husband (Kenneth Khambula) is also stricken with AIDS, and Yesterday cares for him even as they are ostracized by fearful neighbors in their tiny Zulu village. One might expect a film about AIDS to be terribly depressing, and Roodt pulls no punches when conveying the emotional anguish of Yesterday's dilemma. But Yesterday is so visually beautiful in terms of its physical and spiritual landscape (it was filmed in the expansive KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa) that it's universally appealing, and the score by Madale Kunene adds just the right emotional seasoning to the film's ethnic roots. Anyone with a beating heart can relate to Yesterday's plight as a caring wife and mother, and Khumalo's performance is so lovely that she lights up the screen, even (and perhaps especially) during Yesterday's darkest hours. Without pounding on its point, Yesterday puts a human face on a global crisis that's too often viewed on impersonal terms. --Jeff Shannon
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Customer Reviews for Yesterday
the human face of HIV-AIDS
About 40% of all people infected with HIV live in a handful of southern and eastern countries in Africa. This first Zulu film with an international release (and original music) puts a human face on this nightmare. It also shines a light on the complex web of forces that conspire against Africans with HIV/AIDS, especially women. There is only one man in this film, John, and he's absent. John works in a mine in Johannesburg, passed the AIDS virus to his wife, Yesterday, and beats her when she tells him the bad news about her "falling down sickness." Yesterday was so named by her father who said that "things were better yesterday than today." And so they were. Yesterday struggles to raise her daughter, Beauty, but the forces against her are many: economic exploitation, superstitions in her remote village, cultural myths, gender discrimination, environmental degradation, a paucity of medical care that's a two-hour walk, etc. But like so many brave women, Yesterday vows, "Until my child goes to school, I'll not die of this disease." Yesterday has earned several nominations and awards at international film festivals, and was the nominee for best foreign language film by the South African Academy Award. In Zulu with English subtitles.Yesterday
Today
I bought "Yesterday" with no misgivings. I understood that it was an Oscar-nominated film in the category of Best Foreign Language movie. For me, that category holds lots of promise for a movie; one that is cinematically sound but little known in the US due to the language barrier. "Yesterday" lived up to those anticipations. It is a story of a woman who finds that she is infected with AIDS. It gives a look at the social stigma as it was felt by her in her native South Africa. It also gives a look at a person whose determination helps her to remain focussed while much around her crumbles. In that sense it is a moving tale of courage mixed with a look at life in a rural South African village and the challenges that adds to Yesterday's dilemna.
The leading actress, Leleti Khumalo, has an infectuous smile that endears us to her from the start. The entire cast was new to me and I confess that I was aprehensive when I saw that the movie was produced by HBO Films. I was afraid to find a "made for (cable) TV" look about it. I'm glad to say that my fears were relieved (However, I fully expected the film to close with an on-screen lecture about the ravaging effects of the spread of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa...it didn't). If the movie has any shortcomings then, for me, they lie in its' failure to more fully develop the community that Yesterday lives in. While much was covered in that area, much was left to our imagination.Yesterday
"Oh generation of the thoroughly smug. . ."
Please allow yourselves 95 minutes to see how this generation of Southern Africans live. Then: wake up; appreciate; feel. . .Yesterday
wow, what a movie
I've seen my share of powerful and moving films, but this is certainly one of the very best. A woman in Africa who's infected with HIV has to find the strength to wake up every single day and take care of her daughter. The emotions this film has is on a whole other level. First of all, it's true you have to read the English text on the bottom of the screen for the entire length of the movie, and honestly, I think this may be the first time I've actually done that (usually when the characters in a film aren't speaking in English, I turn it over). I simply COULD NOT turn away from the amazing twists and turns of this storyline, and watching the problems this poor woman had to go through. I liked how she kept repeating "I'm not angry about anything" throughout the film, while other people in the village were basically questioning "How can that be possible".
She was certainly a courageous woman- she had to work hard for her daughter and her husband who was working far away from where they live because the family was so poor, along with the entire village. There was some very interesting moments when the woman went to find her husband, and talk to him about the HIV virus. Some rather shocking things, to be honest.
What the woman does at the end of the film for her husband is amazing, and I won't spoil it for anyone. It's amazing that she'd be willing to do that after what has happened, but her belief in supporting her husband and daughter was very powerful and important to her on a personal level. And the whole time she remained grateful for so many things, even during all the bad times, and the times where she couldn't afford things, and during all the times she had to wait for the doctor only for the doctor to be busy and not want to see her until the next week.
A must watch.Yesterday
yesterday - nezuro
this movie is excellent. i cried she had true love in her heart. this move shows aids in africa. I loved it because its based on what is happening in the world. great movie.Yesterday
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