Experiencing Interruptions?

Pretty's Daughter

Pending a move overseas with the woman who raised her and her mother’s ex-employer, Lisa, Busi’s visa gets denied and she is forced to move back to Alexander Township to live with her domestic worker mother, Pretty. Busi who is accustomed to a westernised and privileged life with Lisa, has a hard time accepting her changed circumstances and the implications that these have on her self- conception.
To maintain priority on her education, Lisa has her enrolled at a new elite school in Sandton. However, when she gets to the school the difference in social class between her and her peers becomes evident and she’s left feeling like an outsider.
Hope is soon restored though when she meets Matt, the school’s golden boy, and immediately falls for him. Not long after that, she’s again intimidated by the large number of girls after him, amongst these and more notably the school’s It-girl, Amy, who seems more primed to be with Matt.
Believing that she won’t win, Busi enlists the help of Pretty’s friend and their trendy neighbour, Pam, and makes changes to her physical appearance. She then lies about who she is at the school and goes to extreme lengths to maintain this lie even though it threatens her relationship with Pretty, who tries hard to encourage her to accept herself. She’s determined to win over Matt. She sees victory when Matt asks her out on a date and soon after to be his girlfriend. However, all of this is put in jeopardy when a now unemployed Pretty goes seeking
for work at Amy’s house and Amy uncovers Busi’s lie. Driven by her jealousy, she decides to expose her in the most dramatic way. This brings Busi face to face with her lie in front of the whole school, with a difficult choice to make about who she is.

  • Siphokazi Mtila
    Director
  • Siphokazi Mtila
    Writer
  • Antoinette Engel
    Producer
  • Tshego Molete Khanyile
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    23 minutes 25 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    South Africa
  • Country of Filming:
    South Africa
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16.9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Pan African Film Festival 2021
    Los Angeles
    United States
    February 28, 2021
  • Festival del Cinema di Cefalu
    Cefalu, Sicily
    Italy
    February 28, 2021
    European Premiere
    Semi-finalist
  • Nollywood Week Paris
    Paris
    France
    May 21, 2021
    France Premiere
    Official Selection
  • 1261 Film Festival
    Grenada
    Grenada
    October 31, 2021
    Caribbean Premiere
    Official Selection
Distribution Information
  • Showmax
    Distributor
    Country: South Africa
    Rights: Video on Demand
  • SABC
    Distributor
    Country: South Africa
    Rights: Paid TV
Director Biography - Siphokazi Mtila

A storyteller who is deeply passionate about South African stories and has found purpose in striving to bring these narratives forth, visible and loud enough for the whole world to witness.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

The film starts with Busi hugging her white mother, Lisa and ends with her hugging her black mother, Pretty and this is the best explanation of the film I can give. Busi is a girl caught between two worlds in this film, her “white world” with Lisa and at her school and her “black world” in the township with Pretty she now finds herself in. The film sets her on her journey where she has to learn to let go of her accustomed world with Lisa and accept and embrace her township roots with Pretty. This is not an easy feat for her because growing up she has always shunned her township roots, with hardly any visits to her home before now in favour of a western life in the suburbs with Lisa.
Two years ago we watched a group of young girls marching against racial intolerance at their school when their black natural hairstyles were not considered neat and were banned from the school. I was really impressed with the stand that these young girls took because having attended a former model C school myself in the past, I remember a time where our pride in our blackness and was not this picture. We bent our backs over to fit into the white world at our school and hair was a big part of this. We underwent harsh chemical treatments to straighten our natural hair to look like the white girls at our schools because we could not risk looking black and being associated with blackness. Students lying about where they live to
conceal the fact that they were from the township was also a common occurrence. So the fact that these girls decided to band together and take a stand to fight for the right to be black in white spaces really struck me. Where did this excessive pride in
being black come from with what our history is in this country? I simply had to unpack this and in doing so, a tale begin to spin in my head which I went onto name, Pretty’s Daughter.