Good Screenings

We Are Together

Directed by Paul Taylor

• Winner - Audience Award - Edinburgh International Film Festival
• Winner - Audience Award - Tribeca Film Festival
• Winner - Grierson Award
• Winner - Audience Award - Amnesty International Film Festival

Synopsis

Filmed over three years, WE ARE TOGETHER (Thina Simunye) tells the remarkable and moving
story of a group of children who use music to overcome hardship and loss.

About the director

Paul Taylor

Paul first met the children of Agape while volunteering in South Africa during his summer break from film school in 2003. He spent three months with the children, and it was during this time he first heard their beautiful singing. Recognising the potential of their voices and, for that matter, looking for an excuse to return to South Africa and spend more time with them, he returned a year later with producer Teddy Leifer with the intent of making a film and helping the children develop their music further. WE ARE TOGETHER (THINA SIMUNYE) is his debut film. Amongst the awards it has won are jury prizes and audience awards at IDFA and Tribeca, as well as the audience award at Edinburgh International Film Festival. Paul is the co-founder of RISE films with Teddy Leifer where they have several new films in development and production, including a documentary with director Kim Longinotto and a new film from director Simon Chambers.

• Official Website

More Information

It is the story of an
orphanage, unlike one you've ever seen before, and of the drive of these remarkable young singers and their teachers to make it to London for a series of concerts.

Life has not been easy for 12-year-old Slindile, her siblings and her friends at the Agape Orphanage in South Africa, where most of the children have lost their parents to AIDS. But they are still kids and teenagers, bashful around boys, squabbling with each other. And when they lift their voices in song, something extraordinary happens.

As the kids at Agape orphanage continue to train for what they hope will be their big break, Slindile and her siblings are hit with more hard news - their oldest brother Sifiso, who has been sick for months, has AIDS.

Filmmaker Paul Taylor spent three months in KwaZulu Natal (South Africa) in 2003 volunteering at the Agape Orphanage. He was profoundly affected by his experiences there, the children’s
personalities and, in particular, their beautiful singing.

He returned with Teddy Leifer (producer) to make a film and help facilitate the production of the CD that would eventually bring the children to the attention of the world.

WE ARE TOGETHER (Thina Simunye) has been more than three years in the making and has involved editors Masahiro Hirakubo (Trainspotting, The Beach, A Life Less Ordinary) and composer Dario Marianelli (Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, Shooting Dogs, V for Vendetta). WE ARE TOGETHER has won the Audience Award at all of its premieres – at its European premier at the International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam (IDFA) it received the highest score in the festival’s history to take the award. At its North American premiere at Tribeca Film Festival 2007 it won the overall Audience Award, in which it was competing against all 157 documentary and fiction features. WE ARE TOGETHER then went on to scoop the prestigious Audience Award at its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival, beating off stiff competition from fiction and documentary titles, including RATAOUILLE, IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON, CONTROL and Quentin Tarantino’s latest offering, DEATH PROOF.

Profits from the theatrical, DVD and soundtrack release of WE ARE TOGETHER will be donated to
an education program for the children of Agape and children affected by HIV/AIDS through the RISE foundation, set up by Paul Taylor and Teddy Leifer.

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