District 9

The South African film District 9, about aliens who arrive in Johannesburg, is one of the funniest films you can see.  That is, if you appreciate an edgy, cynical type of humour.  Sharlto Copley, the South African actor (previously unheard of by me) who plays the central role of Wikus van der Merwe, is a comic genius.

I saw the movie, perhaps appropriately, on my aircraft video as I headed towards OR Tambo airport earlier this year.  I have heard from American friends that the movie has been a minor hit in the US, where audiences tend to see it as an offbeat monster-movie.  But anyone who has any experience of South Africa cannot avoid seeing topical references in the land that was known for apartheid.  No South African can miss the reference in the film’s title to District Six, the real-life area of Cape Town that was notoriously flattened by the apartheid authorities in the 1960s, with its overwhelmingly coloured population being banned to the desolate Cape Flats area.  More recently, in 2008, South Africa became notorious for a wave of violence directed against immigrants from elsewhere in Africa. This too is reflected in District 9’s outrageously offensive portrayal of Nigerian immigrants (in real life, the most deeply unpopular of all foreign communities in South Africa), to the extent that the film has been publicly condemned by the Nigerian government.

You can get a full plot summary and other details at IMDB.