Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #165: Tsotsi (2005).

Young David (Benny Moshe), whose mother is dying, runs away from his abusive father to live with other homeless children in Johannesburg's slums. Several years later, David, now going by the name "Tsotsi," (Presley Chweneyagae) inhabits a ramshackle slum shack and leads a dangerous local street gang with his friends Butcher (Zenzo Ngqobe), Aap (Kenneth Nkobi) and Boston (Mothusi Magano). After Butcher murders somebody during a botched mugging, Boston and Tsotsi have a fight which almost kills Boston. Then Tsotsi shoots Pumla (Nambitha Mpumlwana), a young woman while carjacking her, and drives off only to find a three-month-old baby in the backseat. Tsotsi takes the baby home and, upon realising he alone can't care for it, recruits young mother Miriam (Terry Pheto) to breastfeed and nurture it while Tsotsi holds her at gunpoint. From here, Tsotsi's new role as a caregiver whose defences this baby quickly breaks through gradually helps him to find some decency, compassion and optimism for his future, although he must still do everything he can to resolve the conflicts he has caused on the streets, with police captain Smit (Ian Roberts) and his team out to get him and the baby.

This first and, so far, only Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner from South Africa (and indeed the only African film I've ever seen) is a dynamic and strikingly powerful secular tale of redemption and coming of age. Based on Athol Fugard's novel, writer-director Grant Hood demonstrates a vivid familiarity with this story's quite geographically specific setting and even, for a white man, with the indigenous languages the characters mostly speak. But most crucially his focus on Tsotsi's humanisation never wavers or veers into saccharine or exaggerated territory. He tells that narrative trajectory with such patience and genuine empathy that it becomes absolutely searing viewing, particularly the climactic confrontation and sacrifice. Helping Hood enormously are the central performances of Chweneyagae and Pheto (who were both shown at the 2006 Oscars as Hood accepted the award), who pour so much insight, authority and compassion into their roles that it's like they'd actually lived them, and together their chemistry is just electric.

Very few films try to show a villainous character trying to change their ways, and very few of those that do ask us to identify with that character from start to finish. Tsotsi does this, and does it so well that it becomes a suspenseful, thought-provoking and ultimately quite moving meditation on impermanence, mortality, and, both again and most chiefly, redemption. Finally, it may be set in South Africa but I promise you, Tsotsi's story is truly universal.