“AIDS” isn’t uttered until well past the halfway mark of Oliver Schmitz’s problematic South Africa–set tale about the fear, gossip, and superstition surrounding the illness in a township 125 miles outside Johannesburg. Bright, stoic 12-year-old Chanda (affecting newcomer Khomotso Manyaka) puts her studies on hold to handle one unbearable situation after another: her infant sister’s death, her stepfather’s drunken madness, her orphaned best friend’s truck-stop prostitution, her mother’s gradual withering away. The disease that dare not speak its name has an endless supply of strained euphemisms—“influenza,” “this other thing,” “the bug,” or “…”—and is treated by witchcraft or by the quack in town who dispenses herbal supplements. Based on Canadian writer Allan... More >>>