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The South African film “A Small Town Called Descent” has made big waves at the seventh Dubai International Film Festival. It deals with the 2008 xenophobic attacks, in which over 60 people died.
Somewhere in a remote part of South Africa, a heinous crime is committed. Against the backdrop of Xenophobic riots that have swept across the country, two Zimbabwean brothers, along with a local girl, are brutally attacked The older brother (Getmore Sithole) is burnt alive whilst his younger sibling (Morgen Bousa) and the girl (Hlubi Mboya) are sodomised, raped and left for dead. Three investigators from the elite crime fighting unit known as the Scorpions are deployed to A Small Town Called Descent. Their mandate is clear : uncover the truth.
However, are they the right men for the job? The senior Investigator (Vusi Kunene) has a proverbial Monkey on his back that has torn his family apart. The other two investigators; One (Paul Buckby) is an apartheid relic with a drug problem and the other (Vuyo Dabula) is a naive rookie with something to prove - seem an unlikely team to tackle the case. Guided by the zealous hand of an eccentric cleric (John Savage) they manouvre through the small town's complex, social dynamic to get to the truth.