Film
Layla Fourie
D: Pia Marais, Feature film, ZA/D/F/NL 2013, 105 min
o. v. English, subt. German
Layla, a single mother, gets a job in a lie-detector company and hopes all will be better for herself and her son. When she hits a man with her car and flees the scene, she soon finds herself trapped in a fatal net of lies and guilt. A thriller which ponders South Africa’s social vulnerabilities and obsession with security.
Pia Marais is an award winning director and screen writer. After growing up in South Africa, Sweden, and Spain, Marais studied photography and sculpture at the Chelsea School of Art in London, the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She then went on to complete a degree in Film at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb). Her debut film was “Die Unerzogenen” (“The Unpolished“) in 2007. In 2010 her second film “Im Alter von Ellen” (“At Ellen’s Age”) premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. Her most recent film, “Layla Fourie,” was shown in the Competition at the 2013 Berlinale, where it received an Honourable Mention from the International Jury.