OK, the South African movie DISTRICT9 is already 5 years old. But maybe it takes this long to know whether a film is a classic or not. This one most definitely is. Not only does a spaceship strand over Johannesburg (of all cities in the world), it contains half-starved alien fugitives, who get rescued and confined into a camp called District9 – and then are all but forgotten for more than 20 years, when government plans crop up to resettle them into a bigger fugitive camp, farther away from humanity, who’s grown tired of living in the vicinity of those dirty, stranded wretches. Of course the aliens have rights now, and they’ll have to sign an agreement form first, before they can be moved. And that’s exactly when the big trouble starts.
Criminal outbreaks, drug dealing, weapons, Apartheid, birth control, bureaucracy … this movie shows it all, oscillating between mockumentary and hard-core action movie. DISTRICT9 has been nominated for 4 Oscars. For lead actor Sharlto Copley his role as government agent Wikus van der Merwe meant entry into acting Olympus. Not that he needed that, he already was a producer and director before, and a close acquaintance to DISTRICT9 director Neill Blomkamp, who’s also the director of CHAPPIE, an film scheduled for 2015 starring Copley alongside Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel and Sigourney Weaver. Can’t wait!
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