To Be First

Three separate stories create a gripping yet compassionate portrait of small-town characters immersed in the intimidating, alluring, and dangerous world of big-city Johannesburg and Soweto.

The surgeon who did the job was dead. Only the nurse knew what this gangster looked like in his new face. He learned about women from her!

A young, emigrated, South African man comes back to South Africa to sell his mothers farm.

A department store Santa tries to convince a little girl who doesn't believe in Santa Claus that he is Santa Claus, and winds up going on trial to prove who he is.

After falling ill, Yesterday learns that she is HIV positive. With her husband in denial and young daughter to tend to, Yesterday's one goal is to live long enough to see her child go to school.

Twenty year-old student Peter Fraiman falls asleep in 1975 a happy man, having asked his girlfriend to marry him. But when he wakes up, it's 1995; he has a wife he doesn't recognise and two children. Unable to remember anything of the intervening twenty years, he feels he has jumped forward in time. He goes in search of his former girlfriend and is forced to face the fact that he has become a person he never expected to be.

Wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to death, Richard Kimble escapes from the law in an attempt to find the real killer and clear his name.

Follows the story of a luckless actor named Barry who has recently split from his girlfriend. He is seen wallowing at home in his pyjamas, where he becomes fixated on a children's television presenter who he sees on daytime television. The two accidentally collide at an awards ceremony and Barry sets out to impress the presenter. However, he inadvertently lies about his profession, ignoring his actorial status for a career in psychiatry.

Set in working class Newcastle, the Stott family fight their private battles against the backdrop of the conflict of World War II. Helen Stott, over thirty and with a limp, is resigned to being left on the shelf until she meets and falls in love with Norman, a serviceman from London. In contrast, her younger sister Joyce has quite a way with men, and finds herself a little too popular with the troops, especially when her husband pops up on leave from his regiment.

The true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.

A failed track coach finally finds someone who he believes has what it takes to win. The Comrades Marathon is a 90-k race in South Africa. An aging running coach, Barry, wants to field a winner; he's working with four men from a factory, but when he's fired to make way for a smooth, corporate type, he's at loose ends. Then he sees Christine, a Namibian immigrant who runs to forget her troubles. He offers to coach her and soon she's living at his house, following his diet and training regimen. But his single-mindedness gets to her: she wants a job and a place of her own. Plus, the man who replaced Barry likes her and wants her away from Barry. Can runner and coach (woman and man, African and European) sort out their complex relationship before the race? Written by