30 May 2024

Locally produced  documentary, Born to Survive, has been selected to be screened at the 2024 European Film Festival at the Riverwalk Mall next month. 

In an interview, with the brains behind the production, Tshepang Rawson, said the documentary was about a story of a young girl born to refugee parents in Dukwi, who dreams of being a surgeon despite the harsh realities faced by refugees and those displaced from their homelands. 

“Born to Survive  has been selected to play at the 2024 European Film Festival, an annual event brought by Alliance Française Gaborone and the European Union,” she said. 

Rawson said three Botswana short films would be chosen to play alongside selected European movies during the festival.

Rawson, said the Director at the Alliance Française, Angelique Saverino, said they believed that the film possessed the exciting mixture of creativity and cinematography and that they were interested in showcasing it at this year’s festival. 

This poignant and compelling story, she said, was aimed at highlighting and sparking conversations around refugees.

 “It is relatable not only to the Botswana audience but to people all over the globe, as refugees are displaced every where,” she added. 

“We are currently working on a fictional series adapted from the documentary,” Rawson added. 

Shedding light about the documentary, Rawson who is the writer of the script, said it was submitted to the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture (MYSC) for their first-ever Botswana Districts Film Scripts Competition and was selected as a finalist from over 50 entries nationwide. 

“MYSC funded the production of the documentary, which will be shown countrywide as part of the Now! TV and MYSC national screening tour,” she said. 

Asked about her passion for making films, Rawson said she had always been a storyteller because she grew up mentored by people  such as Lucas Segopa, who was her theatre coach when growing up. 

She also said she used to do a lot of theatre work and looked up to Percy Maleta, who used to act on Thokoloshi. 

“So these were the people that I grew up looking up to. And these were people that I grew up being mentored by,” she said. She realised that she wanted to venture into film making during her theatre times. 

Rawson believes there are many ways one can express themselves and one doesn’t really need to be boxed in just one area. 

She also studied Radio and Broadcasting at the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology and stayed in South Africa for some time where she explored writing. 

She said she was given opportunities to write and realised that she had hunger for telling the stories. 

Candy also did honours in screenwriting and directing at AFDA Botswana which is now Awil College. 

“I look up to people like Moratiwa Molema, who is, you know, my former lecturer as well at AFDA,” she noted. 

She is one of the most artistic individuals. And, you know, she just makes you want to unlock a lot of things,” she said. 

She said she is now based in South Africa doing her Masters in Fine Arts with a Major in Film Producing at AFDA Cape Town. Ends