‘This is not a rape movie’
After defying death, Alison Botha has been inspiring many over the years, and now a movie telling her story hopes to continue to inspire.
|||Cape Town - In December 1994, Alison Botha was holding on to her life after being brutally raped, assaulted and left for dead.
After defying death, she has been inspiring many over the years, and now a movie telling her story hopes to continue to inspire.
Botha was abducted by two men who raped her, stabbed her more than 30 times in her abdomen, slit her throat and left her for dead in the bushes.
Botha used the light of a full moon to find her way back to a road where she collapsed and was later found by a passing motorist.
The film feature real-life heroes from the night she was found, as well as actors Christia Visser who plays a young Botha, Zak Hendrik who plays one of the perpetrators Frans du Toit, and De Klerk Oelofse, who plays the other perpetrator, Theuns Kruger. Francois Marais plays Tiaan Eilerd, the man who found Botha.
After years in the making, Alison - The Movie will be premiering in Cape Town on Tuesday and the film’s director Uga Carlini said she was elated with the end product.
Carlini said she first saw Botha speaking when she was a drama student after reading her book and decided then and there that, “one day when I am big I want to be the one to tell the story”.
“I took her to the best coffee shop in town and bribed her with lots of cake. I couldn’t offer her money, but I wanted to tell her story and that is how I won her over and she sold me the rights.”
She said the process of making the film was not an easy one, but said that keeping her vision in mind motivated her.
“This is not just a rape movie and it’s not about the bad guys and what they did to her. It is about something that we all have inside of us. She wasn’t someone that was extraordinary or excelled in anything, but she survived and if she could survive that and turn it into something inspirational, imagine what you can take out of the film.”
The film premiered in Joburg last week and Carlini said she was happy with how the event went. The next premiere, after Cape Town, will be in PE where Botha’s attack took place.
“This will be an extra special premiere because all the real life people from the book will be there.”
Du Toit and Kruger are serving life sentences for the attack on Botha.
Cape Argus