Admit One

Synopsis: After a mysterious disease strikes a small rural village, a young boy who lost his parents embarks on a trip to Johannesburg in search of his uncle.

Technical Details

Title Beat The Drum Country South Africa, United States Genre Drama Language English, Zulu Director David Hickson Cast Junior Singo, Owen Sejake Year 2003     My Rating More Info IMDB Buy Amazon

Review

Young boy Musa lost both his parents to a devastating disease still unknown in his small village. He lives with his old grandmother and his cousin, a girl about his age. The only adult left in his family is his uncle, who he knows lives somewhere in Johannesburg. He decides to make the trip to the big city and try to locate him, or at least to find work and make some money to bring back home. Once in the city he will meet different people, all affected in one way or another by the AIDS epidemic that is claiming a growing number of lives. Musa will eventually realize that this same disease is the one that killed his parents and several others in his village.

A viewer who is completely unfamiliar with the AIDS crisis in Africa may find this film extremely powerful and revealing, as it covers several issues related to the disease, like how easy it is transmitted when preventive measures aren’t taken, the resistance from the people to adopt these measures, the risks the children are exposed to in the streets, how this disease destroys families, etc. Unfortunately several of the issues are extremely simplified and make the whole AIDS problem look smaller than it really is. After watching this film I couldn’t help but think that if the solutions were so easy in real life as they were in the movie we wouldn’t consider AIDS such a disaster.

©2008 by Miguel Grinberg

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