Dirkie

When eight year old Dirkie’s health fails, his father decides to send him to a relative living in the desert. But his uncle, who is flying the small plane, has a heart attack on the way and the aircraft comes down just outside the dunes of the Kalahari. The boy is left alone with his dog. The film follows the child’s effort to stay alive in the desert on one side and, on the other, the increasingly desperate search by his father and the rescue teams. Jamie Uys made the story from a real news report, his own son plays Dirkie, and he takes the part of the boy’s father himself. The production travelled internationally under the title Lost in the Desert. The eighty four minute South African production was completed in 1969.