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For 11-year-old Marnus (Dawian van der Westhuizen), growing up in 1974 South Africa has been idyllic. Summer holidays, fishing trips and the security of a loving, privileged family have given him little reason to question the world around him. But when he accuses the grandson of the family’s Black domestic worker of stealing his fishing rod, the consequences begin to expose a reality he has never had to see. Adapted from Mark Behr’s acclaimed novel, The Smell of Apples traces Marnus’s dawning awareness of the violence and inequality underpinning his childhood. Director John Trengove observes this awakening with a calm naturalism, resisting sensationalism as Marnus begins to see his family, and particularly his celebrated army general father, in a different light. Period detail is similarly understated, creating a world that feels lived rather than reconstructed, and making his gradual recognition of what has always surrounded him all the more unsettling.

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