Reviews

"It is a bold and refreshing venture that Van Patten and Thalmayer have undertaken and that will continue to develop. The team plans to follow the young people every four years, and I, for one, can’t wait for the next installment in 2027!"

Namibia Up is a revelatory film by any standards and inevery sense of the word. Its profound and nuanced exploration of a diversegroup of 18-year-olds in Namibia is a revelation about their lives, theirtraditions and customs, their culture and their families. The film brilliantlyexplores each of these aspects of their lives through a series of interviewswhich carefully examine their hopes, disappointments, loves and fears, dreamsand ambitions. The film holds our attention throughout this all-too-shortmasterpiece both through the interviews and an inspired juxtaposition of thevast landscapes where the young people live, providing a background not only tothe people there but the country. This is thrillingly enhanced with a musicalscore that never intrudes, always supports the narrative.

While the film brings to mind Michael Apted’s documentaryseries starting with Seven UP, Marta Van Patten, the director and Amber GayleThalmayer, producer mark out their own individual, meaningful and verydifferent thematic and geographic territory for their film and establish theirown distinctive and powerful voice. The most poignant moments in the filmreflect on the relationship between the 18-year-olds and their parents andbetween each of the characters’ relationships with past, present and future. Theinterviews elicit from all of them a strong sense of tradition, a deep respectby the young for their family and the past, while also acknowledging an urgentneed to seek their own individual paths for the future.

It is a bold and refreshing venture that Van Patten andThalmayer have undertaken and that will continue to develop. The team plans tofollow the young people every four years, and I, for one, can’t wait for thenext installment in 2027!

 –Kevin Nash, PhD Film Studies, Director of award winningfilm: Waking David,  instructor in filmstudies at Queen Mary, University of London.