South Africa’s Totem There and Dutch production company PRPL have teamed up on “Third Wheel,” one of the big-ticket titles at this week’s Fantasia Frontier co-production market, combining the drive of a propulsive psychological thriller with entertainment and hard-hitting commentary on post-colonial power dynamics in Africa.
Directed by Zoe Rameshu, whose short film “It Takes a Circus” was nominated at the 48th Student Academy Awards, the film project was produced by her partner in the black female comedy “Real Estate Sisters” for South African label Totem There, Leabetswe Moeti-Vogt.
It is also produced by PRPL, based in the Netherlands and headed by CEO Ellen Hevenis. The company’s “When It Melts” won Best Picture at the Sundance Film Festival, and the company’s “Tiger Stripes” won the Grand Prix at Cannes Critics Week in 2023.
“Third Wheel” will be unveiled at the Frontieres co-production market, which opens in Montreal on Wednesday and features a day-long project pitching session.
“Third Wheel,” also written by Ramsch, focuses on Tina, a 26-year-old black surgeon who is adopted into a white family, where her biological mother still works.
In the beautiful Drakensberg mountains owned by her white adoptive family, Tina wakes up and prepares for the wedding of her black fiancé to her white adopted sister and best friend, Emma. But a weekend of boozing twists her devotion, and Tina “comes face to face with a horrifying truth: The person who claims to love you the most is a monster,” the synopsis says.
“‘The Third Wheel’ is an allegory for postcolonial Africa,” Ramush said. “Independent nations date, get acquainted, and may be committed to their governments. Colonists? Third-wheelers. Told through the tendency of white South African families to informally adopt black children, offering ‘what they can’ out of white goodness of heart or white guilt. This is one of their stories.”
“I can’t wait to bring Soaking Kudu to the big screen, quietly strutting through the film in a beautiful, unsettling, and uniquely African way,” director Ramush told Variety.
“Beyond mystery, ‘Third Wheel’ explores marriage from an unusual angle,” she added. “Weddings force all versions of you into the same room: your family self, your work self, your childhood self, your partner’s self. A wedding is the day you have to publicly declare who you are and who you belong to…it can be a nightmare. Literally.”
The project, scheduled to shoot in 2027, has so far received development and production funding from the Tutuka Co-Development Fund, a joint support program of the South African National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) and the Netherlands Film Fund (NFF).
