It is a tell-tale of love, just without the ‘happily ever after’.
There’s no prince charming, there’s no damsel in distress.
There is, however, a broken-hearted man who’s still playing the field and a liberated woman on one side and an unhappy couple about to tie the knot.
Based on the chronicles of mjolo in the city of Johannesburg, Smart Casuals takes one on a journey of red flags.
“I have always preferred films that lean towards an authentic experience, over those that are fairytales. With Smart Casuals, we have attempted to create an authentic experience by finding a sense of transparency and vulnerability within ourselves, which we hope has been infused into the film’s DNA,” says writer and director Zwo Farisani.
Having produced it alongside his sister Ndamu Farisani under their Farisani Creations production company, Zwo drew inspiration from his own experience of the city of gold.
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He tells the audience at the premier screening hosted at The Bioscope in Milpark, 44 Stanley that he had the option of shooting the film in Cape Town but because the culture is different in the mother city, he stuck to Johannesburg to keep the story authentic and relatable.
“I studied in Cape Town for four years and I’d drive through it, in awe of how beautiful it is but it is very different from Joburg. I then came to Joburg, and the dating game destroyed me. I was like, this is not real. After going to LA, I concluded that Joburg is more materialistic than LA.”
“In Joburg, we have two currencies for men and women. For men, our currency is money, if you don’t have money, you are not seen as a human being. If you’re a woman and you do not have the stereotypic beauty that Joburg dictates, you are also not seen as a human being. That is why you can walk through Sandton now and you can see the most unkept man walking with the most beautiful woman but trust that guy’s bank account is huge.”
Zwo adds that this is the reason why there’s a prominent debate around people dating down.
“It messes with you when you’re broke and I’m a filmmaker, so I was broke for so long. You have to find your worth in something else because if I’m going to listen to this city which is the only megacity that is not attached to a body of water and I’m going to be told what my worth is by this broken city then it means that I’m going to fall into the same trap as many other men; in debt.”
Silently reflecting on so many instances where this has transpired, the audience affirms with nods.
“The treatment of this film was to say, we want to introduce the world to Joburg through the eyes of her people,” he says.
As the feature film premieres globally on Friday, 12 April, it does so as one of 6 micro budget projects supported through a joint film-fund by Netflix and the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sport Arts and Culture of South Africa. The fund aim was to alleviate the pressure filmmakers face to raise additional funding and boost recovery of the creative industry from the pandemic, whilst ensuring job creation.
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The film stars Anga Makubalo, Angela Sithole, Terrence Ngwila, Mandisa Constable, Nyaniso Dzedze, Nomsa Twala and Hip-Hop dance pioneer, Kudzai Mureriwa.
For Angela, playing Mahlatsi was refreshing yet felt personal.
“When I picked up the script and read the story, I was like, ‘Is that a jab at me? Ooh girl you’re taking all these red flags and are still going for it’. When you take on a character, it’s very important not to judge anything and really just play it as truthfully as you can. It was really refreshing, and it was great working with Zwo, he has reminded me why I started out acting.”
She adds that the film brought back the fire in her and she’s grateful to have been a part of the cast.
