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Audience Choice Award - 2005 London Australia Film Festival
Best Documentary - 2004 Tribeca International Film Festival, New
York
Best Documentary - 2004 Lexus IF Awards
Brisbane International Film Festival - 27 July - 8 August 2004 - Official Selection
Melbourne International Film Festival - 21 July - 8 August 2004
- Official Selection
Hot Docs 2004 - 23 April to 2 May 2004 - selected for screening
Cape Town World Cinema Festival / Sithengi Film & TV Market,
Cape Town, 13-16 November 2003 - documentary competition finalist
Finalist, Independent Spirit Award, Lexus IF Awards 2003
Find
out about other festival screenings...
Reviews
1 July 2004 - Phillip Adams interviewed Cathy Henkel on ABC Radio National.
Introducing Cathy he said:
"The thing about documentary films, as opposed to feature
films, is that the stories they tell are not ones we necessarily want to hear,
and they don’t always have a happy and a tidy ending. But the best of
them are films that operate on a number of levels and tell engaging stories
in all their rawness and complexity.
"Cathy Henkel's film does just this. "The Man Who
Stole My Mother’s Face" is the story of family, sexual assault
and a new nation, South Africa, caught in a cycle of terrible violence."
He concluded the program by saying:
"Cathy Henkel is the storyteller of this extraordinary
film and it will pin you to your seat."
9 May 2004 - Actress Glenn Close was one of the
judges at the Tribeca Film festival. In an interview she gave to the director,
she describes her reaction to the film:
"I was profoundly moved by it. It starts in a terrible event
that really changes the landscape of a family, and tells the story not only
of that family - the courage of the daughter who is determined to help her
mother find closure, and the courage of the mother who in the end comes to
life when she realises that attention is being paid and there is a possibility
for some sort of justice - but also the wider picture of what is going on
with this issue in South Africa and across the world. So the film starts very
specifically and tells this really riveting story, and puts it in a greater
context.
I think it's a tremendously important movie for anyone who cares
about violence against women and anyone who cares about the viability of a
family, and healing as opposed to just hopeless destruction. I was really
taken by this movie, and hope that everyone will have a chance to see it and
be strengthened by it and inspired by it and healed by it."
On Monday 3 May at 10 pm, CBC-TV's Passionate Eye broadcast THE
MAN WHO STOLE MY MOTHER'S FACE, in which filmmaker Cathy Henkel tracks the teenager
who brutally raped her mother in Johannesburg in 1988. In a review preceding
this broadcast, The Toronto Star (Friday 30 April 2004) described
the film as:
"A 'stark, intimate documentary' that has 'brought resolution
for Henkel's mother, brother and the director herself. The project which began
as a quest for justice, wound up as a barometer of a 'global crisis'."
Read the Toronto Star interview with Cathy Henkel, published on 30 April 2004.
27 April 2004 - New York's The Village Voice
selects THE MAN WHO STOLE MY MOTHER'S FACE as one of 25 movies to see at the
Tribeca Film Festival:
THE MAN WHO STOLE MY MOTHER'S FACE The flipside of Long Night's
Journey Into Day, this effectively agonized doc provokes the question of whether
a privileged white South African's personal suffering might also merit a filmmaker's
quest for truth and reconciliation. That the filmmaker, Cathy Henkel, is the
daughter of the victim— who was raped and beaten in her Johannesburg
home in 1988— lends an extra layer of empathy to a story in which justice
appears more easily attainable than peace. R.N.
www.villagevoice.com/issues/0417/tribeca.php
27 April 2004 - Film Freak Central gives THE
MAN WHO STOLE MY MOTHER'S FACE *** (out of four):
"[The film-maker's] travels take her through the South
African justice system and encounters with anti-rape activists and educators,
as well as a reckoning with how big the problem is in South Africa. As the
initial shakiness of Henkel's technique gives way to a flood of painful information
both personal (a confrontation with the director's thick-headed brother) and
political (questioning why her mother's file was mysteriously 'destroyed'
by the police), one has to concede that the film is a thorough and upsetting
exploration of the responses to and experiences surrounding the trauma of
such an event. *** (out of four)
www.filmfreakcentral.net/hotdocs/hotdocs2004capsules.htm#face
27 April 2004 - THE MAN WHO STOLE MY MOTHER'S FACE is reviewed
by Variety:
Reviewed in Variety on Tuesday April 27 by Ronnie Scheib who
says the film "risks being claustrophobic in its home-movie intimacy....but
her (Cathy Henkel's) quest expands until, rather abruptly, it assumes nearly
cosmic proportions... and reveals a country with widespread sexual abuse,
where one out of two women is raped, and sodomizers of 2 year old twin girls
confidently walk the streets".
Download the review
in Adobe Acrobat (PDF)
22 April 2004 - The only one of Eye Weekly's
"best bets at Hot Docs" to be awarded *****
"[Cathy Henkel] puts the pieces of her family back together,
all without a hint of self-congratulation. An amazing story that succinctly
balances despair and triumph."
www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_04.22.04/film/hotdocsbb.html
Brett Hendrie, Hot Docs Canadian International
Documentary Festival:
"This gripping investigative film revisits a horrendous
crime from the past and cracks a mystery that stumps police."
Nancy Schafer, Tribeca Film Festival:
"The Man who Stole my Mother's Face is a sobering tale
of survival. strength, healing and redemption. It's a story about faith and
love, and ultimately, the attainment of justice."
Find out more... Audience responses
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