‘They say you can learn more from a game you lose than a game you win. That’s how I got here’.

In the Cape Flats of South Africa, an ancient war rages on. Debts are paid with blood and dirty money, shots fired by battle-scarred men and frightened young boys alike. Violence reigns, and wounds run deep with the wrongs of many generations. Vengeance is no stranger here.

Ian Gabriel’s FOUR CORNERS dramatises the Number Gangs of Cape Town, and the lengths to which members will go to defend the honour of a 26 or a 28. The story follows 13-year-old Ricardo (Jezriel Skei) as his ambitions of becoming champion at chess become embroiled in very real games of life and death. As 26 leader Gasant (Irshaad Ally) points out, Cape Town is like a ‘massive game of chess… every street, every corner belongs to somebody’.Meanwhile, Farakhan (Brendon Daniels), formerly an active member of the 28, is released from prison and seeks to settle his final debts then declare himself no longer part of any Number, to establish his house as a ‘river of peace’. We also meet his old flame Leila (Lindiwe Matshikiza) as she returns to the streets her father sent her away from as a child, as well as a kindly cop desperately trying to keep Ricardo out of trouble – this establishes four stories, four lives, each connected to the rest, making up the FOUR CORNERS in the chessboard of Ricardo’s life.

Though slick, bright and stylish, FOUR CORNERS is full of inherited justice and second-hand swagger. Not just another gangster movie, here you can sense the fear behind the fighting, the reluctance in the raging guns. Caught up in an endless fight which is no longer their own, these men are imprisoned by a Number, trapped in the chequerboard streets they seek to defend in fear and tribal pride. Both Ricardo and Farakhan display a gentleness, a desire for peace, which marks them out as stronger than any Numbered warrior, even as they are forced to act in ways against their nature while grasping to keep their lives. Footage shot in the real ganglands of the Cape Flats is interwoven with an energetic soundtrack of South African talent and music found on location, buzzing with an atmosphere which is intense, human, and despite its aggression, very vulnerable and very, very real.

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