Director Akin Omotoso weaves together three separate stories to create a gripping yet compassionate portrait of small-town characters immersed in the intimidating, alluring, and dangerous world of big-city Johannesburg and Soweto.
This electrifying drama from Nigerian director Akin Omotoso (whose Man on Ground screened at the 2011 Festival) is a masterful synthesis of big-city anxieties and aspirations.
Beginning on a train travelling from the coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal to Johannesburg, Vaya focuses on three passengers and follows each of them into the city. They’re strangers to one another, yet bound by interlocking destinies and a shared naïveté. Imagine a South African spin on Amores Perros and you’re partway there.
Shifting effortlessly between scenes of intimacy and of bracing violence, Vaya exudes compassion for each of these small-town characters but does not hold back from plunging them into the urban snakepit that awaits.