Back Of The Moon is an impressive production from The Bomb Shelter Film Company in Johannesburg. It’s a stylish gangster tale set in Sophiatown in 1958 just before the apartheid police demolish the area, and the gangsters are running amok.
It’s based on a play that director Angus Gibson first produced 30 years ago about Sophiatown’s forced removals. As Gibson extended the plot with scriptwriter Libby Dougherty, a love story flourished amid the violence. The result is a tense and brutal thriller, softened by thoughtful, melancholy and almost languid moments.
