The Man Who Stole My Mother's Face

Hope Road is a quiet street in a white middle class suburb in Johannesburg, South Africa. Two days before Christmas in 1988, Lorna Henkel, a 59-year-old woman, is sexually assaulted and savagely beaten in her home by a young white teenager. Fourteen years later, she has still not recovered from this assault. The police bungled the investigation, the neighbours disputed her version of events and her son blamed her for letting the perpetrator into her house. The boy, identified from a school photo, was never charged and remains a free man. The film is her daughter Cathy's search for some form of justice and whatever it takes to takes to help her mother move on from this trauma. The journey takes her back to Johannesburg, to confront the past and the present climate of violence. The police re-open the case, but they run into numerous obstacles and the filmmaker has to take matters into her own hands. This superb, highly topical film will stay in your mind long after the credits roll.