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Tsotsi wins Oscar
06/03/2006 05:44 - (SA)
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| Presley Chweneyagae, right, and Terry Pheto, cast members from the best foreign language film Oscar nominee, Tsotsi from South Africa, arrive for the 78th Academy Awards on Sunday in LA. (Chris Pizzello, AP)
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Los Angeles - Tsotsi, the South
African film about a Johannesburg township thug, won the
Oscar for best foreign language film on Sunday.
Directed and written by 42-year-old Gavin Hood, the film
features a searing performance by Presley Chweneyagae as a
gun-toting, emotionally dead gangster who suddenly learns that
human life has some value when he is forced to care for a baby
he has kidnapped.
"God Bless Africa!," Hood said, upon receiving his award.
"We may have foreign language films, but our stories are the
same as your stories. They are about the human heart and
emotion."
The film was based on famed playwright Athol Fugard's only
novel, a 1950s tale about the dehumanising effects apartheid
was having on the lives of black South Africans.
With Fugard's permission, Hood updated the story to the
present day and made its main character a grown-up Aids
orphan.
Hood has said the changes allowed him to present the
despair of post-apartheid South Africa as well as the violence
that lurks beneath the surface. But Hood also insisted that his
aim was to tell a universal morality tale.
The other nominated films were the Italian family drama
Don't Tell, the French war story Joyeux Noel (Merry
Christmas), the German World War II film Sophie Scholl - The
Final Days, and the Palestinian film Paradise Now.
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