‘Resentment’ disappoints

By Rosalia David

RECENTLY, I stumbled upon a local short film which narrates the story of a young lady diagnosed with liver cancer who is given three months to find a donor to stay alive.

At the outset I must say that the film has great pace, with an incredibly informative subject matter but fails miserably on its intersectional representation of liver cancer patients. The subject matter was intriguing and the film did a great job for presenting its case but the editing left me wondering whether it was shot during daylight or midnight, because it is dark throughout the film.

The director did also not do much justice to the storyline.

I think starting off with a scene depicting how she ended up going for a checkup at the hospital would have sent out a message that encourages people to go for regular check-ups when they feel certain discomfort, as demonstrated.

I’m not going to give it a rotten egg rating here because although the erasure of ‘liver cancer’ was problematic, we cannot deny that the main actress and the doctor are excellent actors and definitely nailed their roles.

One of the other things that stood out, which in my opinion was severely disappointing was the long drive at the beginning.

Two minutes into the film and the main actress was still driving around town?

And the sound effects that confuse the short drama with a horror movie.

Besides that, the film ends on an ambiguous note and we don’t know what happens next with the patients, but I’m sure this isn’t the last that we will hear about this.

Let’s hope not.

It was indicated that this was just part one of the film, but it needed to be longer. Easier said than done, I know, but eight minutes just isn’t long enough to do this film genre any justice. Maybe I should take a chill pill and wait for Part 2 to air my views but the first episode was supposed to be a bombshell so we look forward to the second episode.

Besides that, it is a great initiative in raising awareness about the seriousness and prevalence of cancer in Namibia.