The Smell of Apples

TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026 REVIEW! The Smell of Apples is a stunning, shocking, masterful look at apartheid in 1974 South Africa told in such an authentic and compelling manner that both the message and form of this film will be studied for years.  While apartheid may ostensibly be the subject of the film, it also has themes that run even deeper than the specifics of that time and place — it slowly and subtly builds to a thorough investigation of how structures of power and oppression are built and maintained over generations. 

The central character in The Smell of Apples is 11-year-old Marnus (Dawian van der Westhuizen), who is blissfully unaware of the factors bolstering his charmed life.  HIs has a live-in best friend Frikkie (Wian Carstens), and his father Johan (Hilton Pelser) is poltically well-connected but spends a lot of time with them both.  His mother Leonor (Maude Sandham) gave up her aspiring musical career to concentrate on the family, and his sister Ilse (Karoline Watson) is musically talented and a star pupil at school.  Meanwhile, his black nanny (Celeste Matthews Wannenburgh) handles most of the chores and acts as a kind of second mother.

Marnus (Dawian van der Westhuizen) watches from the rocks along the shore in The Smell of Apples.

While apartheid may ostensibly be the subject of the film, it also has themes that run even deeper than the specifics of that time and place

At first, Marnus’ chief struggle seems to be winning over the respect of his macho father, a military man, who seems to prefer Marnus’ more physically capable best friend Frikkie.  But when a general from Chile, Mr. Smith (Alejandro Goic) comes to visit, many of the roles in the family become destabilized.  The we overhear snippets of Mr. Smith’s advisory role in teaching the South African military how to crush dissent.  Doreen’s son is cast under suspicion for a missing fishing rod and is cruelly punished by the authorities.  Mr. Smith begins flirting with Marnus’ mother, Ilse starts acting out, and we learn more about Frikkie.  

All reasonable people will agree that apartheid-era South Africa was a hideous stain on the soul of humanity.  There’s a standard way of telling this story, which is to show the momentous  struggle of the people oppressed, and highlight the gains achieved along the path towards equality, which have come at an extraordinary cost of blood and suffering.  There is a school of thought which says this should be the only way of telling this story, (partially) because these victories belong to the oppressed, whose stories have often been suppressed or erased, and no hint of humanity should be afforded to the oppressors.