Shot on location in Johannesburg and directed by 29-year-old South Africa-born Neill Blomkamp, a computer graphics whiz, District 9 has taken the US box office by storm, earning the number-one spot and raking in US$37 million (R302 million) during its opening weekend on 14 August 2009.
What makes the film all the more remarkable is that it cost only US$30 million (R245 million) to make, a small sum by Hollywood standards if one considers it took US$250 million (R2 billion) to bring the latest Harry Potter installment to life.
Blomkamp grew up in Johannesburg, moving with his family to Vancouver, Canada, when he was 17. He dabbled in filmmaking while still at school in SA and later went on to specialise in animation and computer graphic design.
District 9 began as a six-minute film clip, called Alive in Joburg, which Blomkamp wrote and directed in 2005 as a sample of his work.
The fledgling director's big break came when Peter Jackson, a New Zealand filmmaker, producer and screenwriter best known for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, approached him to direct Halo, a film based on a computer game. Although Halo never took off due to a profit-sharing dispute, it inadvertently led to bigger things, as an executive at Universal Studios who was overseeing the Halo project came across Blomkamp's six-minute clip and showed it to Jackson.
Jackson was impressed by Blomkamp's work and asked him to turn Alive in Joburg into a feature-length movie. And thus District 9 was born.
The involvement of Jackson gave Blomkamp instant credibility. In Blomkamp, Jackson saw a young man creating work based on his life experiences.
"He saw South African society - both the good and bad of the society there - and he wanted to put a science fiction spin on what he witnessed growing up because he's a science fiction geek," Jackson told the Los Angeles Times at the recent Comic-Con convention in San Diego. “District 9 is not reflective of any movie that I can imagine. It's really very original, which I love about it, and that's totally Neill."
District 9 kicks off in the year 2010, 28 years after an alien spaceship arrives in Johannesburg. The craft hovers above the city without any contact, but eventually humans take the initiative and cut into the ship. There they discover a large group of malnourished and sick aliens and bring them back to earth. The newcomers are confined to an area called District 9 - a slum-like compound surrounded by barbed wire with no running water or sanitation.
A documentary style with hand-held cameras and computer-generated images is used to create a fast-paced narrative.
With its strong anti-segregation message and partly filmed in South Africa's largest township of Soweto, the film is clearly a satire of apartheid. One District 9 website carries a Google Earth-like view of the district - using a satellite image of Soweto.
The title District 9 plays on Cape Town's District Six, best known for the apartheid government's forced removal of over 60 000 coloured residents during the 1970s. The community was relocated to the Cape Flats 25km away.
Although several parallels can be drawn to the apartheid era, Blomkamp says he tried hard not make the film a heavy “message movie”. He says he wrote the word “satire” in large block letters on a piece of paper and posted it in his office to remind that his first priority was to entertain audiences.
It may seem incredible that Blomkamp successfully directed a Hollywood blockbuster before his 30th birthday, but he says he's been working towards this moment all his life.
"When I was 14 or 15 I got into 3D animation on the computer my parents bought me," Blomkamp told the Los Angeles Times.
"I was toying with practical effects - prosthetics, in-camera effects, models and photography. I knew I wanted to be involved in all that."
"I realised I could take all the ideas I had and have them make fun of themselves," Blomkamp added. "At the same time, I could address all of the stuff I wanted to get in there."
The movie has opened to rave reviews, including one from New York Times critic AO Scott.
“The South African setting hones the allegory of District 9 to a sharp topical point,” Scott said.
“The country's history of apartheid and its continuing social problems are never mentioned, but they hardly need to be. And the film's implications extend far beyond the boundaries of a particular nation, which is taken as more or less representative of the planet as a whole.”
Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune described the film as “an electrifying sci-fi ride that defies all the usual Hollywood clichés. It's that rarest kind of film, magnificent trash.”
Gwen Watkins, a media blogger for Bizcommunity.com, was also impressed by the movie, but for different reasons.
“Last week's media preview of District 9, the new South African sci-fi film, left most of us quite shattered,” Watkins wrote. “The film is deservedly gaining credit internationally but in South Africa it may well be greeted with uncomfortable reactions - the film unashamedly draws on our past and current view of species different to our perception of what is human and how we treat them.”
South Africans starring in District 9 include Sharlto Copley, Blomkamp's childhood friend and frequent collaborator.
In the movie Copley plays the role of Wikus van der Merwe, the bureaucratic official from Multi-National United, the giant corporation charged with relocating the aliens.
Other locals who star in the film are Vanessa Haywood, Kenneth Nkosi, Mandla Gaduka, Eugene Khumbanyiwa, Jason Cope, David James, Louis Minnaar and Sylvaine Strike.
Michael Murphy of Kalahari Pictures, based in Cape Town, was the film's supervising producer.
Blomkamp is currently visiting South Africa to promote the film. It opens in local cinemas on 28 August 2009. The South African premiere was held on Wednesday night, 19 August, at Ster-Kinekor The Zone@Rosebank in Johannesburg.
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