The Sunday Mail
Tsitsi Ndabambi Leisure Correspondent —
TWO Mutare sisters — Amanda and Tanaka Ranganawa — have released a film called “All She Wants” under their McLara Films Production company.
Tanaka, a fourth year Film and Theatre student at the Midlands State University, wrote the film.
It was then produced and directed by Amanda who holds a degree in Theatre from the University of Zimbabwe.
The movie features an independent workaholic, Jessica Dube (played by Amanda), who is too busy to engage herself in social activities after inheriting her late father’s business empire.
Her worried mother Sarah (Everjoyce Mahachi) fears that she might not get married. Therefore she decides to find her a boyfriend in the form of an ambitious young businessman, Tawanda Moyo (Dearly T Kanyaz).
“The movie actually mirrors most of the real life issues that people encounter in their day-to-day lives and it projects some of the beliefs that some people in society have, for example, Jessica’s mother who believes that a good woman should be the one that stays at home as a housewife while her husband fends for the family,” said Tanaka.
“I observed how in Zimbabwe women are having cultural contradictions because we are fighting for gender equality yet the cultural norms are that a woman should be under her husband. I also wrote about a twist of love in the film to show that matters of the heart are not as black and white or plain and simple as people would like to think but there are a lot of grey areas that we might not even understand as individuals,” she added.
In the film, things make a turn when Jessica falls in love with her former employee, a part played by Donovaly Dzakatira. The sudden twist of events leads to more drama.
The première was held at the Golden Peacock Hotel in Mutare in the presence of more than two hundred people last month.
Lucy Nkomo, the lady who transformed the dilapidated Sakubva Beit Hall under her Rebuild Sakubva project, was a guest at the event.
So far, the two sisters are distributing the movie in Mutare only.
We asked them why.
Said Tanaka: “As a local production we wanted to reach the local audience first but we will be spreading it across Zimbabwe pretty soon, there have been some requests from other parts of the country as well as outside the borders.”
Commenting on the actual process of creating the movie, Amanda had this to say: “The work wasn’t easy and it wasn’t woman-dominated as most people think, we had a lot of men working with us who were willing to assist. They fixed a lot of problems that my sister and I encountered.
“It was quite an experience. To some, film-making is a hobby and some people that I meet claim to be filmmakers and yet they don’t take it seriously. Another challenge is that most people are not trained actors or trained film creators. So we end up having to train the actors and crew afresh. My advice is that aspiring filmmakers should enrol in theatre or film schools for the sake of producing quality product.”
The two sisters want to make more productions for both television and cinema.
