Kibwe Tavares’ vision for “Jonah” is a unique one. Though the film is laden with visual effects from Factory Fifteen and Jellyfish Pictures, they are there only to serve the story.
Themes of greed, hubris and loss are rendered in moving performances by the film’s three primary actors, Daniel Kaluuya, Malachi Kirby and Louis Mahoney. But the city is a star, too. Its ever-changing facades communicate the passage of time and the painful decay of a dream.
Synopsis
Mbwana and his best friend Juma are two young men with big dreams. These dreams become reality when they photograph a gigantic fish leaping out of the sea and their small town blossoms into a tourist hot-spot as a result. But for Mbwana, the reality isn’t what he dreamed – and when he meets the fish again, both of them forgotten, ruined and old, he decides only one of them can survive. Jonah is a big fish story about the old and the new, and the links and the distances between them. A visual feast, shot though with humour and warmth, it tells an old story in a completely new way.
VFX Breakdown
Full credits on the Vimeo page.
Hat tip to Ash Thorp.