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EZIKO

By Babalwa BAARTMAN, Jenna Cato BASS

SANUSI - as PROD

Crime - Development 2025

Young academic Ntsundukazi, journeys into the rural Eastern Cape in search of her long-lost sister. Upon encountering resistance, she uses the rules of Eziko, the traditional safe space for women, to her advantage and discovers a truth that challenges everything she believes about herself.

- Year of production
- 2025
- Genres
- Crime
- Countries
- SOUTH AFRICA
- Languages
- XHOSA, ENGLISH
- Budget
- 1 - 3 M$
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Babalwa BAARTMAN, Jenna Cato BASS
- Writer(s)
- Babalwa BAARTMAN
- Synopsis
- After the passing of her mother, 34-year-old Cape Town academic, Ntsundukazi, decides to relocate to Ghana. While tying up loose ends, she discovers that her sister Nomkhitha who she believed was abducted 30 years ago, was in-fact married off as a teenager through the custom of Ukuthwala (forced marriage) with her father’s consent. A devastated Ntsundukazi confronts her estranged rural family who inform her that Nomkhitha was taken by the Nyembezi clan of Mpondoland. Bent on revenge Ntsundukazi rushes off to their village to rescue her sister.
  It is the height of the December festive season, when celebrations are common and music abounds, women gather at Eziko - their safe space— where all village secrets are kept. After being met with resistance in her search of her sister, Ntsundukazi takes advantage of the ceremonial rules of hospitality, to interrogate the village women as to her sister’s whereabouts but faces rejection over and over again. It is clear the entire village is keeping her away from her sister. Ntsundukazi traces the community’s resistance to its most respected and aloof matriarch, Nomvuzo. When she finally corners and confronts Nomvuzo, blaming her and the rest of the village for their part in her sister’s suffering, she is faced with a complex revelation that the woman in-front of her is in-fact her sister. She will never find the sister she lost, uNomkhitha, but she can accept the sister she has found, uNomvuzo.