'Sabbatical': touching tale on family, roots and success

SABBATICAL, a homegrown Mother's Day movie, hits the big screen tomorrow. In an interview with writer-director Karabo Lediga and producer Kagiso Lediga, they discussed how the difficult mother-daughter dynamic in their work captivates viewers, immersing them in a world where personal grounding, not wealth, defines success.

- DEBASHINE THANGEVELO

The film opens with Lesego (Mona Monyane), a high-flying corporate climber on the cusp of a promotion to CEO at LouwFin. Her life takes a tumultuous turn when she becomes entangled in a financial scandal involving the misappropriation of a miners' pension fund.

As such, she retreats to her childhood home in the township in Pretoria, where she is forced to face the harsh reality of her career being over while being abandoned by so-called friends. She also has to face her mother Doris (Clementine Mosimane) and the ghosts she's been running from since leaving for the big city and an opulent lifestyle that left little room for family or friends from the township.

While dealing with financial ruin as her accounts have been frozen, she dodges the calls from Percy Mthimkhulu (Loyiso Gola), the tenacious investigator on the case.

On what inspired this particular story, Karabo shared: “I've always found my relationship with my mom, who's quite a huge character in my life, quirky, funny.

“There's a constant conflict, but there's also a lot of humour between the two of us; kind of a typical mother and daughter relationship in this country, on this continent, at this time.