This is an affecting, compelling coming of age drama about a white girl in Zimbabwe during the 1980 “Southern Rhodesia” general election.

The way I pick TIFF movies is I try to read enough about them to gauge my interest, hopefully avoiding spoilers that TIFF programmers inexplicably sometimes insert in the descriptions, add them to my list and then promptly forget everything I read. I didn’t realize this film was from the child’s perspective. Child actors are so hit and miss.

Fortunately, Lexi Venter is one of those kids that just seems to inhabit her role. It’s so hard to know how and why some kids can be convincing and some kids scream “I’m Acting!” but this kid, on whom the film’s success nearly entirely rests, pulls it off. I never for a second doubted she was this precocious child.

The film itself is interesting and compelling, both due to the setting and due to the obvious conflict that I think a lot of Hollywood films would want to dance around. Seeing nearly everything through the kid’s eyes really helps with this, as you believe she’s beneath/above the ethnicity/culture concerns the adults care about.

Davidtz mostly does a good job in her debut. My biggest problem is that she gave herself the showiest role. She is too old for it and looks it. But that’s not really the problem so much as that, for a film that focuses so much on a child, it does feel like the camera lingers on her a little too long at times. (Yes, a child’s mother is arguably the most important person in their life. But when that actor is also the screenwriter and director, I can’t help wondering if someone else might have given the mother slightly less screen time.) This is a minor quibble, however.

I also take slight issue with that nearly final scene. I haven’t read the memoir and it’s possible it’s in it. But I don’t feel like the film set us up properly for this tiniest bit of pseudo magical realism. I guess there’s one scene that sort of, kind of does, but not really. It just felt a little much, like the personification of Hollywood guilt about colonialism on screen and it felt tonally distinct from the rest of the film. But that could also just be a first time director, right? It’s possible somebody with a little more experience might have sold the same idea better.

Anyway, I still think this is very much worth your time. This is a part of world history that doesn’t get a lot of attention.

7/10