The 20-minute film by Avie Luthra narrates how a young South African AIDS orphan leaves his village to live with an uncle in Durban, who is not too thrilled to have the child for a new companion.  

In the opening scene, as Lucky buries his rusted metal airplane, I thought of  Amar, Akbar, Anthony, but as the camera pulls back, we see he’s buried it at not in the family garden, but in the gravesite of his mother.  

In Durban, his uncle warns him about the woman next door, a cantankerous Tamil woman who  lives on her own and has nothing but scorn and distrust for her black neighbors, using a washcloth so she won’t have to  touch the communal water tap directly.

Joy Mwandla is bright and plucky as the orphan, and Muthul Naidoo conveys strength and also vulnerability in her bearing and her eyes, sometimes both at the same time.

This movie was screened November 2nd, 2006 at the Indo-American Arts Council’s sixth film festival.