Why 'The Heart is a Muscle' is a sublime Oscar contender: Imran Hamdulay's directorial debut

Earlier this week, Imran Hamdulay’s “The Heart is a Muscle” was put forth as South Africa’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.

This feat is huge for the writer and producer, who marked his directorial debut with the crime drama.

I got to see the film at the 13th Silwerskerm Film Festival, and I was blown away by the storyline trajectory.

Set in the Cape Flats, the film opens with Ryan (Keenan Arrison) and his wife Laila (Melissa de Vries) hosting the family for their son Jude’s (Troy Paulse)  fifth birthday celebration.

But it quickly devolves into a frantic search for Jude, who disappears while playing outside.

At the outset, it appears that a kidnapping is the main thrust of the film. It isn’t. 

Hamdulay's writing finesse shines as he uses this moment as a trigger to delve into socially pertinent, yet unspoken, subject matters such as transgenerational trauma and toxic masculinity. It is underpinned by social conditioning as well.

In an interview ahead of the festival, Hamdulay said: “The title, ‘The Heart is a Muscle’, suggests both emotional memory and physical endurance.”

When pushed to expand, he added: “The story lives in a space between opposites: between emotion and physicality, between memory and motion, between fragility and endurance. In families and communities like mine, there are fractures left by history, by time, by apartheid, and by inherited silence. 

“The body often becomes the last remaining archive. The heart, our essence, carries all that remains unspoken: vulnerability, inherited shame, gestures passed down without words. There is a kind of memory in that one sometimes calls out for reimagining, for a way to be seen and named again.

“The title came quite late in the process, only when the movie was nearing completion. I needed to experience the film in its final form to fully understand what it had become, from its original conception to its shape on screen.”

Hamdulay deliberately sought to alter the historically negative on-screen portrayal of the Cape Flats through this film.

He explained: “The Cape Flats carries a very specific weight. It is a uniquely South African and a uniquely Cape Town inheritance. It holds the residue of forced removals, fractured families, and systems that broke people.

"And yet, out of that brokenness, there is music, faith, laughter, and colour. Those complexities are always present.

“The Cape Flats contains both damage and defiance. Ryan’s story cannot be told without acknowledging that tension. His journey is not only personal, but also spatial, generational, and deeply tied to the landscape.

"He is a man caught between worlds, between the harsh lessons of his father and the physical scars left by his environment.”

Of course, the director couldn’t have chosen a better actor than Arrison to channel the duality of the struggles of Ryan as a father wanting to be better while reconciling with his own childhood, where he had violence thrust upon him as the son of a notorious gang leader.

When Jude goes missing, Ryan, along with his two best friends, Zaheer (Ridaa Adams) and Anees (Danny Ross), start frantically searching the neighbourhood for him. 

With emotions spiralling out of control, they end up in a section of the Cape Flats, where they have to tread carefully. 

Andre (Dean Marais), who is the father of a little boy named Lesley (Lincoln Van Wyk), is mistaken for having something to do with Jude’s disappearance. 

Overcome with fear and rage, Ryan beats him for information, only to find that he was mistaken after Jude is found by one of their neighbours. 

This incident acts as a catalyst, prompting Jude to confront his personal demons and address a past event where his one friend took the blame for a reckless moment when they were younger and served time behind bars on his behalf. 

Andre, who was privy to the incident, later reaches out to Ryan for money in exchange for not going to the police about the assault. 

What starts as a grudging payoff evolves into a heartfelt journey of redemption and transformation for Ryan.

As the well-worn cliche goes, “No good deed goes unpunished”.

Hamdulay goes with an ending that is open to interpretation. While this can be unsettling for audiences seeking that happily-ever-after conclusion, the unconventional approach is refreshing. 

The casting in this project is spot-on. Every actor brought a different dynamic to the story. And De Vries also deserves praise for her compelling performance as a strong and supportive wife. 

“The Heart is a Muscle” is a truly sublime cinematic offering, underpinned by a powerful script and stellar direction. It had its world premiere at the 75th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, where it was awarded the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in the Panorama section. 

In August, the film had its South African premiere at the Silwerskerm Festival, where it won Best Feature Film.

And now everyone is waiting with bated breath for a positive outcome at the Oscars.

Rating:  **** a standout film with exceptional qualities.