Yesterday

Yesterday lives in a Zulu village in South Africa with her small daughter while her husband works in a mine in Johannesburg. When a cough will not clear she walks for days to reach a clinic and learns that she is HIV positive. Her husband refuses to accept it and the village keeps its distance. She is left with one aim: to live long enough to see her daughter start school. Darrell James Roodt's 2004 film is entirely in Zulu, among the first South African features made in the language. It tells the epidemic through one woman's days rather than through statistics: the years when the drugs did not reach people and a diagnosis was treated as a disgrace. Leleti Khumalo carries it without asking for pity. It was nominated for an Academy Award.