U-carmen

Mark Dornford-May's contemporary reimagining of the 1875 opera Carmen is set in Khayelitsha, one of South Africa's largest townships, and cast with singers and actors recruited by the local theater group Dimpho Di Kopane, most of whom had never appeared on film before. Sung entirely in Xhosa (complete with its distinctive glottal clicks), it intertwines Georges Bizet's famous score with traditional South African melodies, and the result is simultaneously faithful to the original and specific to its African location.

Carmen (Pauline Malefane) works in a cigarette factory, where her regal bearing, fiery temperament and feminine wiles arouse jealousy among ...