This South Africa-set film has been sitting quietly at the Apollo Cinema, Piccadilly for a week or two now, and it's only through lack of obvious choices of other films to see that I decided to give it a go. And I'm glad I did.
It's about a girl, Chanda, played by newcomer Khomotso Manyaka and her relationship with her mother who has AIDS which culminates in a struggle to do what she believes is right in the face of prejudice.
The film starts with her visiting an undertaker to get a coffin for her baby half-sister who has died, her mother Lillian is too wracked with grief to leave the house. Her step-father is an alcoholic-waster who visits his wife and children full of promises and regret only to steal what little cash they have in the house and disappear again.
Chanda is bright, studious and takes on the role of parent to her two younger half-siblings as Lillian gets sicker. The community she lives in rally around to help Lillian when her baby dies but the truth about her illness is something that she must hide at all costs - only her neighbour Mrs Tafa (Harriet Lenabe) is complicit in her deceit and she has her own reasons for keeping the truth hidden.
It is at turns bleak, unflinching, touching and heart-warming. A truly lovely film it's getting 81% from me.
On Rotten Tomatoes there are only 14 critics reviews counted which doesn't represent a consensus on the site but of those 14, the average rating is 93%. Readers have given it 82% from 158 ratings.
As Metacritic is increasingly behind the times with aggregating it's reviews I'm going to try out IMDB to see if it is more consistent. For Life, Above All it's counted 22 reviews with an average rating of 8/10.
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