Title: Wild Coast Warriors
Year: 2024
Country: South Africa
Language: Xhosa, Zula, with English and English subtitles
Directors: Nick Chevallier, Leigh Wood, Guido Zanghi
Synopsis
For centuries, indigenous people have lived sustainably on South Africa’s Wild Coast. In this documentary about a court case against Shell, these communities succeeded in halting oil and gas exploration, winning ongoing protection for their ocean.
This film celebrates and pays tribute to the amaMpondo for their outstanding and historic, legal victory over Shell, Impact Oil and Gas (Impact Africa) and the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources in South Africa. The story is constructed as an almighty existential clash of cultures. The amaMpondo protagonists, conserving nature, their way of life and their very existence, battle the oil giants and the Minister of Energy antagonists, their profit-driven fossil fuel exploration that could potentially destroy marine life and indigenous culture on the Wild Coast. This leads to a climactic courtroom ruling that might help influence the direction of travel for the next few years that humanity has left to drastically reduce carbon emissions and prevent a burning planet and biodiversity loss.
Review
It is so gratifying to watch a documentary of the inhabitants of this beautiful part of South Africa. This documentary shows the resilience of the amaMpondo people of Pondoland in their struggle for their survival, and to be able to continue living in the land that they chose to settle in as a kingdom in the 16th century.
Multiple reviews published by the makers of the film about their fight against Shell and the massive oil industry can be seen under Reviews 2 above
