The Boers at the End of the World (2015)

  • NR
  • 08/05/2015 (ZA)
  • Documentary
  • 1h 25m

In remote Patagonia, a 100-year-old community of Afrikaans Boers struggles to keep their language and culture alive, while longing to be reunited with their distant families in South Africa.

Overview

In a remote stretch of Patagonia, Argentina, there is a family - the Dickasons - who speak a language from a country 7,000km to the east. They are part of a 114-year-old Afrikaans Boer community - South Africans of Dutch descent who sailed across the ocean to South America after the destruction of a war with the British. Today, less than 50 still speak the language and they struggle to keep their culture alive. Patriarch "Ty" Dickason, 82, is a cowboy who has never flown in a plane - and yet he yearns to one day visit the country of his blood before he and his compatriots pass away. This multiple SAFTA award-winning documentary is a portrait of the last days of the community - a parallel world where Afrikaans was never linked to Apartheid - and one family's journey to reconnect with South Africa.

Richard Finn Gregory

Director

Cast

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