The film is set in 2003 and 19-year-old Dap Smit (Edwin van der Walt) is constantly fighting with his father, Dawid (Stian Bam), a veteran of the Border War. The men don’t see eye to eye on anything, and there seems to be no hope for reconciliation between them. Dawid’s wife, Karina (Erica Wessels) is caught in the middle of their battle.
Dap then has a series of dreams in which he is a combat soldier in the Border War in the 1980s. There he meets his father at the same age, and those dreams turn young Dap’s perception – and life – completely upside down. There’s no going back. But what is the way forward?
The film combines the theme of a broken relationship with the Border War through instrumental dream sequences and overcomes the gap between a father and his son even though the war occurred almost 30 years ago.
Director Craig Gardner says; “Each dream was created to facilitate the unfolding story. Therefore, there are no gratuitous battle scenes. Rather, the war dreams are microcosms of real events married with fiction in order to reveal character or advance the storyline – little ‘mini-stories’ within the bigger story.”
The war is used as a creative device to drive the story of the father and son towards a conclusion.
"We purposely do not take a moral standpoint on the conflict itself. This is not a Border War movie – it is a relationship drama, which is at the core of virtually every successful movie," Gardner says. "And My Father’s War centres on the broken relationship between a father and his son.”
Other actors that can be seen in the film includes Neels Clasen, Hannes Muller, Meren Reddy, Fumani Shilubana, Jai’prakesh Shewram, Vian Singleton and David Rees.
My Father’s War releases nationwide in theatres on Friday. 5 August 2016 and is produced by Lion Mountain Films and distributed by Ster-Kinekor Entertainment.
The teaser trailer can be watched on
YouTube.