Son of Man (2006)
The story of Jesus reclaimed as an African fable and shot against the backdrop of a violence-riddled township and with text updated to modern times, Son of Man delivers one indelible impression after another. Mary conceives the Christ child during a militia attack on a grade school, Jesus asks for the surrender of handguns from his apostles, and the angel Gabriel is a precocious child marked with simple white feathers. Equally intriguing is the melding of the crucifixion and resurrection — alluding to the fact that in today’s Africa, political dissidents, as Jesus was, are conveniently made to disappear. Roger Ebert described Son of Man as “continuing the South African film renaissance…one of the most extraordinary and powerful films at Sundance.”Â?
