Film

We Are Together (Thina Simunye)

Cert: PG

Description: Life-affirming documentary focusing on the Agape Orphanage in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, a refuge for children, many of whom have lost their parents and loved ones to AIDS. Bound together in adversity, the children form a choir using the power of song to help them deal with their deep emotional wounds. As news of the choir travels the world, the children face the exciting possibility of travelling to London to perform in concerts that will raise awareness of their plight and ensure the orphanage's future.

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Dir: Paul Taylor.

Country: UK.

Year: 2006.

Duration: 86mins

Poignant voices of the Aids orphans

Moving images: Children of Aids victims sing to make money for their orphanage

Shooting the president eight times

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By Derek Malcolm
6 Mar 2008

Paul Taylor's affecting documentary, the winner of countless audience awards on the festival circuit, is about the poorly financed Agape Orphanage in KwaZulu Natal, where most of the parents of the children are Aids victims.

The effort to improve the children's lives is largely a matter of getting them to sing for their supper as a choir.

A planned trip to the UK falls through but one to New York is organised, and first a well-known South African pop star and then several American stars come to their aid. The precarious situation for the orphanage is thus changed for the better.

The deliberately artless filming concentrates on 12-year-old Slindile and her siblings, hit with the news that their oldest brother, Sifiso, who has been sick for months, has Aids and eventually dies for want of the proper drugs.

Natural playing throughout - if you can rightly call it playing - and some fetching singing helps an often moving story along.