ENCOUNTERS 2023: Dorpie

Dorpie follows social worker Lana O’Neill as she goes about her days ensuring the safety of young women in the small town of Bredasdorp where she has established a safe house in the wake of a series of rapes and murders of girls and women. Candidly shot, the film shows how poverty, addiction and sexual violence wreak havoc on the often desperate lives of the women of Bredasdorp and consequently on the community as a whole. This delicately rendered film offers a sensitive character study of a woman making the most of her natural leadership qualities but struggling against the tide. While Dorpie provides a moving tribute to Lana’s fiery compassion, the film also makes it clear that one woman, no matter how determined, cannot transform the structural inequalities that make life so precarious for the most vulnerable South Africans.