The flowers keep rolling in for Gonarezhou: The film, after being selected for the I Will Tell Film Festival only a week ago it was recently announced that the film has been nominated for the Best Narrative Feature Award. It's a major nod not only for the director Sydney Taivavashe and the entire crew but for Zimbabwe's film industry as a whole.
BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE! 🎉🎉🎉
— GONAREZHOU THE MOVIE (@gonarezhoumovie) September 2, 2021
We are humbled by this nomination from @Iwilltell 🙇🙇🙇. A special special congratulations to our Director Sydney Taivavashe (@direkta_) on this one!
Looking forward to the award ceremony in the next 3 days! 🇿🇼#ZimFilm #GonarezhouTheMovie #Zim pic.twitter.com/QqvYrdtuZv
This nomination completes a trio of awards that the film is up for at the festival; Eddie Sandifolo is up for Best Lead Actor while Tendai Chitima is nominated for Best Lead Actress.
The film is set to be screened on Saturday the 4th of September at 9pm while the awards ceremony will be on Sunday September 5th in-theatre (Savor Cinema, Florida, USA) and online.
The film shares a name with one of Zimbabwe's largest national parks and it is an anti-poaching awareness film which is written and directed by Sydney Taivavashe. In shona "Gonarezhou" means the place of many elephants.
The film is said to have been inspired by the 300 elephants that were killed in Hwange national park by poachers a few years ago. It was produced between 2019 and 2020 with the cooperation of Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority. In the massacre of the 300 elephants poachers used cyanide to poison watering holes at Hwange National Park in 2013.