Umshini Wam
2011 · 16m · South Africa
Directed by Harmony Korine
Genres: comedy, dark comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, provocative, surreal
Two wheelchair-bound, gun-toting characters played by South African rave-rap duo Die Antwoord ramble through a marijuana-hazed day in the bush, bickering, boasting, and unleashing violence to prove they are not to be trifled with.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Korine takes the most aggressively unserious artists alive, locks them in wheelchairs, and somehow makes a film about impotence and aggression that actually *works* — the kind of premise that makes you recoil and then can't stop thinking about it.
A audacious provocation that gestures toward Buñuel's disability-as-rupture and Chris Morris's weaponized absurdism, though the film's commitment to shock-as-substance occasionally overwhelms its formal intelligence.
The wheelchair constraint becomes the entire film's engine — every threat, every boast, every violence becomes funnier and more disturbing precisely because of what's been taken away, and Korine's decision to lean into that limitation rather than ignore it is what makes this sting.
Reviews
Umshini Wam works on multiple different levels, blending absurdist comedy with genuine heart and pathos alongside pointed social commentary.
Festivals
- South by Southwest (SXSW) 2011