Poppie Nongena

The film rests on a true story. The place is South Africa and the time the middle of the seventies. Poppie Nongena is a Black woman. She works as a waitress for a senior civil servant. Her husband falls ill and can no longer work. The law steps in at that point. Poppie is deemed an illegal resident in her own country. With no work contract her residence permit is not renewed. She has to find a new home in another region. The account is built on a mother’s effort to protect her family. The film was adapted from a novel by Elsa Joubert. Clementine Mosimane and Anna-Mart van der Merwe take the leads, with Chris Gxalaba and Nomsa Nene also in the cast, in Christiaan Olwagen’s South African film of 2020.