Nakhane’s ‘B(l)ind The Sacrifice’ Asks All the Necessary Questions

When Pansegrouw received the script in 2021, she was moved by what she read. “I came on board when Nakhane was already speaking to British producers that the agent had put them in touch with. I was really excited, and things were not moving at a pace that I was happy with,” says Pansegrouw. “I just knew that it was gonna be major, and that we had to make it. I needed to raise quite a bit of money to ensure that the creative vision wasn’t compromised by the logistics of just physically getting there.”

The film stars the likes of Nandi Nyembe, Sihle Shona and Treasure Nkosi. Nakhane tells OkayAfrica that [Shona] had a notebook dedicated to the role. “And that was really fun — to work with somebody who was that studious,” adds Nakhane.

For Pansegrouw, producing the film was “a beautiful experience.” She adds: “My job is quite stressful, but I really become like a child when I’m on set because that’s why I want to make movies. I wasn’t surprised that Nakhane and I were really aligned in what we wanted to do.”

Pansegrouw was also intent on finding a gap in Nakhane’s calendar where they’d be able to commit to the pre-production phase of the film so that the actors are familiar with the director’s vision. The filming happened in November 2023 in the town of Prince Albert.

“All the time it took to know the team, to understand the script, to go through things repetitively — by the time that we shot, we could actually have a good time because we knew the story, and we knew what we wanted to get,” says Nakhane.

At its core, the film is an inquiry into the many ways the patriarchal urge to be in control affects society. “Human beings have always wanted to be in control of the natural world, forgetting that they themselves are nature. The moment where that separation happened, where human beings extracted themselves from nature, it seems there was this need to overwhelm it,” says Nakhane. “It says in the scripture that God will give you dominion over all the creatures. It starts with dominion over the creatures, and then after that it’s dominion over the people. This story is almost like a microcosm of that concept. I wanted to explore things that we take for granted, and stories that many of us grew up with,” Nakhane adds.

Nakhane also wanted to explore how the after-effects of colonization continue to affect us. “I’m interested in the in-between, how people react to trauma, how people react to this kind of betrayal. Not all of us have been taken to the mountain by [a] parent who tried to kill us, but a lot of people have been betrayed by people that were supposed to protect them. And what do you do with that betrayal,” wonders Nakhane.

Picking the right location was a huge deal for Pansegrouw. “I went on quite a wild goose chase; I went as far as Calvinia and all the little stops in between. We found a number of places, but the farm that we settled on, I think I was just amazed at the vastness of it. That vastness really spoke to what the film needed. From a less creative, practical standpoint, Prince Albert is a town that functions. I really enjoy the shoots where you are at the mercy of the wilderness and the weather. It brings a different kind of quality to the screen, especially when you’re working with limited resources, because you have to be extra creative to make it appear like you had a lot of resources,” Pansegrouw says.

Nakhane wanted the rugged terrain to serve as a metaphor for what is going on in the story. “I wanted that brutal beauty, [which] is also kind of unwieldy and scary, like a father figure, so that you constantly have this information in the background.”

Initially, the story was very allegorical. Nakhane needed to inject urgency into it, hence the decision to set it in the present moment. This technique opens up several questions as well, such as: who is in charge? How and why do they get these people to do this? “A lot of the questions are answered, and a lot of them are not, because it’s a short [film], and it’s a proof of concept to a bigger feature that we’ll be making.”

The film is about what happens when the oppressed begin to wonder about their condition. In this case, The Son, played by Shona, questions The Father’s decision to live in the wilderness. It attempts to align the allegorical world of the Bible with the present in order to see what the ending shall be. The most impressive part about the film is the pacing. The dialogue feels tight, with not a second wasted on unnecessary chatter.

Nakhane exercised their artistic freedom when telling the story, and so we wind up the conversation by wondering whether there were any limits to their outlook. “The question that you have to ask yourself is ‘What is it that you’re trying to bring across?’Then you put the limitations on yourself. For example, one of the limitations was I didn’t want there to be a plethora of beautiful landscapes, because it takes away from the brutality of the story.”

Nakhane and Pasengrouw are currently working towards the feature length, which will answer the question about how this nomadic family came to be.