The World Unseen

Sweeping romantic drama about two Indian women who fall for each other in the hostile environment of apartheid South Africa.

Shamim Sharif's impressively confident debut as director manages to charm by being intermittently romantic whilst also addressing the legacy of South Africa's atrocious apartheid laws.

The story, set in the 1950s, concerns two contrasting Indian women. Miriam is a married mother, dutifully submissive and bound to her husband and his family, living in the remote countryside. By contrast Amina is free-spirited, irrepressible and single, and breaks all the rules of her conventional Indian community and the new apartheid-led government, by running a café with Jacob, her ‘coloured’ business partner. When she meets Miriam, their unexpected mutual attraction pushes Miriam to question the rules that restrict her. When Amina helps Miriam’s sister-in-law to hide from the police, a chain of events is set in motion that changes both women forever.