The Will to Live, Fading Fast in Soweto ‘Ndebele Funeral,’ Set in South Africa, at 59E59 Theaters

Daweti (Zoey Martinson), a former university intellectual moldering in a Soweto shack, takes an unusual approach to home décor. She calls the dirt and trash littering her floor essential elements of feng shui, and used some government-supplied wood to build a coffin. “I deserve a good coffin while I’m dying,” she tells her friend Thabo (Yusef Miller). “You deserve a good roof while you’re living,” he urges her. But Daweti, with AIDS but refusing medication, has given up on life. Ms. Martinson’s vigorous and disturbing Ndebele Funeral, at 59E59 Theaters, presents a grim portrait of contemporary South Africa, a place of false hopes and bleak realities. Neither Daweti, once a hotshot debater, nor Thabo, who hoped to become a writer, nor even the clerk from the Department of Housing (Jonathan David Martin), are living lives anything like those they’ve dreamed. Indeed, dreams are the only solace Daweti finds.