Fugitive is delighted to announce that a deal with Topic, the new streaming service from First Look Media, will see Poppie Nongena, one of South Africa’s most acclaimed films of recent years, made available to subscribers exclusively in North America, starting 8th April.
Based on Elsa Joubert’s 1978 international bestseller The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena, regarded as one of the best African novels of the 20th century, the two-hour film tells the true-life story of a mother’s struggle to keep her family together during the Apartheid period, specifically just prior to the Sharpeville and Soweto riots. It’s a time of immense upheaval, when inhumane government regulations constantly separated husbands, wives and children, often resettling them in remote areas designated as black homelands. In Poppie Nongena, we follow Poppie (played by Clementine Mosimane) as she is declared ‘illegal’ in her own country and then engages in a desperate battle with the authorities for permission to stay while holding down a job, keeping her children educated and caring for her sick husband.