Where Two Oceans Meet

For fifteen years, filmmaker Lulu Scott has been corresponding with Phadiel, who is serving a 25-year sentence in a Cape Town prison. She also sends him images of landscapes he used to frequent – moments of suspension while he waits for the big day. His wife Kulsum lives alone with their two children in Mitchell’s Plain, a township created during apartheid to isolate “Cape Coloureds”. Adopted by this family, Lulu films the intimacy of their daily lives which, in spite of a pervading absence, are nevertheless filled with patience, hope and laughter. The complex reality of South Africa, the filmmaker’s country of origin, marked by years of apartheid – a segregation that is still insidiously present – and by the murderous violence of gangs, emerges between the lines. Contrasts interweave and swirl around this sublime place, whose toponym is charged with an almost antinomic metaphor: the Cape of Good Hope – where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet, but do not mix.
Aurélien Marsais

Where Two Oceans Meet, 2025