The Harvesters

Just finished watching this very powerful portrayal of a deeply religious and conservative Afrikaans farming family in the Free State region of South Africa who take in a drug using street kid played immensely well by Alex Van Dyk. In fact, he, and the young lead Brent Vermeulen (who plays the family's only son Janno) were both outstanding in this film. And I believe this was their first film roles? The acting from all the main characters was superb, as was the script and direction from Etienne Kallos. A special mention must be made of the sublime scenery in that part of South Africa. I gave this 8 stars (instead of 10) for two reasons. At times I did find it quite slow moving, especially given the length of the film, and secondly, despite the overall high quality as I outlined, I found it a quite depressing and bleak story that left me reaching for a block of chocolate at the end.