''Liyana'' is a 2017 Swazi

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

directed and produced by

Aaron Kopp Aaron Kopp is a US-based cinematographer and film director who grew up in Eswatini. Life Kopp shot and co-produced '' Saving Face'' (2012), the Oscar-winning documentary about acid attacks in Pakistan. He and his partner Amanda Kopp shot for '' ...

and Amanda Kopp, following a group of Swazi orphans as they construct a narrative based on their own experiences. After premiering at the 2017

LA Film Festival The LA Film Festival was an annual film festival that was held in Los Angeles, California, and usually took place in June. It showcased independent, international, feature, documentary and short films, as well as web series, music videos, episodi ...

, the film was released in the United States on October 10, 2018. It received highly positive reviews and won the award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2017 LAFF, as well as numerous other festival awards.

Synopsis

''Liyana'' follows a number of orphaned Swazi children as they develop a story under the guidance of South African author and activist Gcina Mhlope. Their narrative stars a fictional young girl, Liyana, as she embarks on a journey to rescue her younger twin brothers from kidnapping with her pet bull, and overcomes various challenges along the way. As the students develop their tale, the live action documentary is interspersed with animated scenes depicting Liyana's adventure.

Reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 98% based on 41 reviews, and an average rating of 8.3/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

References

External links

* 2017 films Swazi documentary films 2017 documentary films 2010s English-language films English-language documentary films {{Eswatini-film-stub