Exclusive: The Red Band Trailer For FIVE FINGERS FOR MARSEILLES

From filmmaker Michael Matthews and screenwriter Sean Drummond comes a thrilling western set against the backdrop of post-Apartheid South Africa. Five Fingers for Marseilles takes place in a small town “governed” by dubious local officials, living in fear of a lawless mob; when an exiled outlaw returns home in search of solace and redemption, brotherhood and loyalty are fused with vengeance.

The western genre, long associated either with American film and the lone cowboy holding fast to independence in a changing landscape, or the spaghetti western, in which European directors examined more forcefully the often insidious nature of the more corrupt side of the cowboy/frontier life, is given fresh eyes in Five Fingers for Marseilles. While not lacking in gunfights or bar brawls, the film takes many of the western genre tropes and deepens them in a new national context, with deeper investigation into the politics of postcolonialism in rural South Africa.

 

... Five Fingers for Marseilles does not attempt to gloss over the violence of the situation (not entirely fictitious), nor does steer clear or a harsh look at those people and institutions that turn a blind eye to these problems. Wrap this in the iconography of the western, and you get a distinctly South African syntax of how these images can be reinvigorated in a new form.