Rumored to have been filmed with the help of local gangsters,  Jerusalema is the engrossing tale of a a poor kid from the Soweto slums who grew up to become J-burg's top crime boss and a man whose life of crime seemed inevitable. Adolescent car thief Lucky Kunene attempts to the leave the life of a gangster behind with his youth, but his resolve weakens when he finds himself a victim of crime. A confident, conniving, humorous man, Kunene dons the suit of philanthropy and makes a living hijacking apartment buildings through a series of elaborate scams. He is an appropriately vague Robin Hood for a film that allegorizes Johannesburg as a post-apartheid Jerusalem. Lucky Kunene tries to balance on the line between crime and legality, between black African gangster and wealthy man belonging to the white elite. His downfall seems as unavoidable as that of Johannesburg as the failed Jerusalem. Writer-director Ziman fills his sublime and violent tale with a moral ambiguity that seems like the predestined product of a “promised land” born of corruption. Jerusalema is a rare crime thriller that invokes not morality, but inescapability. Was South Africa's Oscar submission.

(In English)