“Powerless to change the past…she lived to change the future”
In a village where there’s no electricity, water, or any types of public services, a young woman called Yesterday lives her life next to her seven-year-old daughter called Beauty, and prays everyday for a great future for her beloved daughter. Her husband has left the village and works underground in the mines in Johannesburg. With almost no money, but armed with hope and stoicism, the woman has only one dream: to see her daughter in school, something she was never given a chance. But Yesterday is about to find something that will inadvertly affect the rest of her life: she is HIV positive. What follows after hearing the terrible news is an emotional, achingly beautiful journey that Yesterday has to embark on in order to understand the disease and learn how to cope with it.
Yesterday is the first isiZulu feature film, and the first South African film to receive an Oscar nomination. It was made with the support of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, M-Net and the National Film And Video Foundation.
The power and the intensity of the movie lie in its simplicity. After finding out her HIV positive status, Yesterday continues living her life. We are not introduced to her emotional struggle and the pain she’s experiencing to a large extent, but we clearly see her moral strength and her determination to make the most of such a devastating situation. Without being intrusive or trying to exoticise the disease, the movie explores the community response to her disease, the fears, the anxieties and the hardships the character faces on both a personal and a social level.
After her health beings to fail, Yesterday (who was named that way by her father who believed that “yesterday was better than today or tomorrow. But that was a long time ago.”) tries to get help from a hospital that is located in a neighboring village. She is sent home two times before she finally sees the doctor as there is only one doctor for hundreds of patients. Despite knowing very little about the disease, and being illiterate which complicates her access to information, Yesterday decides to take the medicine that she is given and follow the doctor’s advice entirely. This proves out to be the best decision that she made, and we see the consequences in the visual contrast created by her husband’s return to the village who is in a much worse state of health than she is. When the community rejects both of them for irrational fears that they might infect the others, Yesterday builds “her own hospital,” a small a tin shack, that is erected far away from the village, on an isolated hilltop.
The movie is at its best when it explores the anxieties of the villagers, their decision to ostracize the character and her determination to help her husband and care for him despite the fact that he brought the disease upon the household. For that reason, the movie is about forgiveness and about the decision to accept one’s faith and the desire to bring meaning to one’s life despite the daily hardships, the pain and social rejection one might experience.
Why watch the movie?
Firstly because it introduces you to the daily life of an HIV positive woman. We hear about people dying of AIDS every day but most of us do not have access to their pain, their suffering and the challenges they face in their struggle to fight the disease. The movie Yesterday humanizes the disease and shows you how difficult living with AIDS is, but it does that without trivializing the characters or the situation explored. Despite the depressing topic, this movie explores three different challenges that are emblematic of millions of Africans living with the disease every day: how hard it is to live in an African village where no local, state or regional agency provides you with any assistance, how complicate trying to get medical care is once you know you’re HIV positive, and how complicated it is to deal with prejudices against those with AIDS. As the movie producer Anant Singh notes: Yesterday is “a sad story but it’s also an uplifting one at the same time.”
It is hard not no get touched or even appalled by this movie. But what is more important is what we learn by the end of the movie: that hope, determination and love have a much better effect on people’s lives than rage, ignorance and denial. Yesterday is a young woman who accepts her faith but refuses to allow it to control her life. Perhaps the best way to describe this remarkable movie is through the following four words: “Live at all costs!” Even if that means defying the odds and stand up against everyone else.
Yesterday” features Leleti Khumalo (“Sarafina”) as Yesterday, and Lihle Mvelase, who had never acted before, as her daughter.
This movie is rated 10/10
Read more about the movie on the official site by clicking here.
And the movie trailer I just uploaded on youtube:
