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Original Film Title: Fences
Director’s Name: Jacinda Barker
Writer’s Name: Jacinda Barker, Werner Breedt
Producer: Jacinda Barker
Country of Origin: South Africa
Country of Filming: South Africa
Language: Afrikaans, Zulu
Runtime: 30 minutes
Film Description:
This film is a poetic exploration of fences, as both a symbolic social division between the working and middle classes in South Africa and as a symptom of post-apartheid society. It tackles the pervasive perception and feeling of unsafety present in contemporary South Africa. Fences (2025) is partly inspired by Vittorio De Sica’s Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948). A South African folkloric figure, the tokoloshe, is used to personify the sense of psychological unsafety of the film’s characters. Fences (2025) touches on current social issues in South Africa, such as load shedding and crime. The film attempts to draw a parallel between working-class conditions in post-war Italy to those of the working-class in post-apartheid South Africa. It follows a South African security guard travelling far distances to work on his bicycle, which gets stolen, and the aftermath this has on his life and psychological state.