Chris Barnard
Lafras Verwey (58) has worked as a clerk in the Civil Service in Pretoria for thirty years. By day he sorts files and whiles away the mundane hours writing grandiose propaganda speeches and drilling imaginary platoons in the washroom, but unbeknownst to his colleagues he is also a clandestine parcel courier for a secret organization that recruited his services to complete their covert mission.
Die Wonderwerker tells the story of Eugène Marais, a famous Afrikaans writer, poet and researcher. The story focuses on the few months he spends on the Van Rooyen's farm, where he falls in love with the 19-year-old Jane Brayshaw.
She was loved, she was a princess, heir to the throne - but the childhood fairytale turned to lifelong nightmare for Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's first child. When Henry divorced her mother and married Anne Boleyn, Mary became an outcast and a threat to the Protestant succession. By a twist of fate, on the death of her brother, she became queen at last in 1553, but her attempts to make England Catholic again were a disaster for her and the country. History has called her "Bloody Mary" for the burning of the Protestants, but how fair is this? This film paints another picture, of a woman true to her beliefs, pushed towards a terrible psychological disintegration.
The acclaimed drama based on Dalene Matthee´s award-winning novel. "Fiela se Kind" (Fiela's Child) is the story of a white foundling boy that is raised by a brown family. But the childs life changes irrevocably when white census officials discover him living across the established borders of society, and he is removed from his foster parents. "This is the moving story about a close family being torn apart by the social convictions of the day. It is the story of a mother´s enduring love and hope to see her taken son again. Fiela is a down to earth woman farmer who does not let anyone step on her. She raised a white castaway child, Benjamin, and teaches him the simple things in life."
Onder Draai die Duiwel Rond is a South African television drama series created and written by Chris Barnard and produced by Sonneblom Films about beautiful people, good wine and respectable neighbours living on the banks of the Hartebeespoort Dam with lives that are seemingly idyllically peaceful and romantic, but which harbour deep secrets just beneath the surface of the facade.
