"Silent Wishes" The horrors of war...

[Mhle Nzima]

Set in war-torn Southern Africa, the story follows a young princess' doomed journey of discovery.Princess Salani is secretly offered up as a sacrifice to her ancestors in the King's bid to end the gruesome realities of wars.



Background Note: I wrestled with the idea of how graphic I should make the visuals for the intro war scenes and finally decided to make them as gruesome/explicit as possible to highlight the extremities of the horrors the characters would fear. As such,some content might be too extreme for kids so please bear with me. This was my 2nd film and 1st actually ANIMATED work, which earned me an award as 2010's Most Promising Zimbabwean Director at the Zimbabwe International Film Festival. It was further nominated for Outstanding Screen Production (Film) at the 2010 National Arts Merit Awards. Since I was an anime studio noob, I had many restrictions as to what I could do with my characters, but fortunately for me, I found the story wasn't that demanding animation wise, however I believe I could have made it far better with more time and experience. I hope you all enjoy it.

[Charles]

You make films that embrace powerful subjects. Enjoyed watching this and thank you for posting the video. The audio is faint and it was hard to hear what the characters were saying. On your next project consider turning up the volume a little more when your characters are involved with dialogue and this will help with the viewing experience.

[Mhle Nzima]

Glad you liked it. As one of my first efforts, I was forced to use an unprofessional sound recording environment and equipment, so the audio was pretty much the best I could do at the time. I have since started using a professional sound recording studio for my films though. Thanks so much for the critique.