Tsotsi

The shanty towns of Johannesburg have some of the highest crime rates in the world. Murders and robberies are daily occurrences. The people whose world this is follow the inexorable and cruel law of survival. Tsotsi is an almost feral, brutal gangster with no trace of compassion for any other human being, an orphan who has grown up without any social or emotional support. He represses the past, and lives only in the comfortless present that he shares with other lost souls. Even his name is not his own, but a word meaning just “thug” in street slang. After a robbery, a car he has stolen turns out to contain something, or rather someone, who will unwittingly show him a way out of the hell in which he has been living so far. Tsotsi is now forced to try to solve conflicts by negotiation and communication rather than violence. For the first time he opens up and is able and willing to talk about the past that he has so angrily suppressed. Apart from the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, the film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2005.