Actress Terry Pheto is on a roll! Hot on the heels of her red carpet appearance at the London premiere of A United Kingdom comes the news that she will be reuniting with Charlie Vundla to star in his latest film called Cuckold.
The duo first worked together on the 2011 film, How to Steal 2 Million, which was written and directed by Vundla and starred Pheto. This time around, Vundla, who directed, wrote and produced Cuckold, also takes his turn in front of the camera, in the lead role of Smanga.
According to Indigenous Films, Cuckold is about a young university professor who is saved from self-destruction by a former school mate and begins a journey to save his house, his marriage and his life.
Pheto stars as his wife, Laura, who is a beautiful but troubled woman. Having often relied on her looks to get through life, she has complex self-worth issues. She married Smanga because he was the first to see that beyond her looks, she is an intelligent woman. Coupled with her lingering depression, Smanga’s discovery that he is infertile leads Laura to seek other men out so that she can build her fragile self-esteem.
Smanga, a nerd at heart and an academic prodigy, is broken by Laura’s departure and he sinks into alcoholic oblivion.
It should then come as no surprise that the word cuckold is used to mockingly and scornfully refer to the husband of an adulteress.
In the role of Smanga’s old friend Jon, a golden boy with the gift of the gab, is Louis Roux. Jon has always been able to talk his way out of anything. A life coach by profession, he uses his looks and charm to wheedle himself into people’s lives. Having burned all his bridges, he is now living out of his car, but a chance encounter with Smanga offers a light at the end of the tunnel. Shortly after Jon moves in with Smanga, Laura returns and thus begins a unique living experiment...
“In the modern world, where every middle class child is told from day one that they’re special, can do anything and have everything, what happens when that child grows up and realises the painful truth that his parents lied?,” asked Vundla.
The director said he wanted to dig below the surface to find the failures inherent in middle-class entitlement.
“Cuckold is a realistic, character-driven story that examines what it is to be human through the universal struggle to survive when things don’t go our way, and we have to accept imperfections in ourselves and those around us. There’s also a focus on the dichotomy in relationships – the conflict between the need for autonomy versus dependence,” he explains.
The film has already screened at a number of international festivals, including Toronto International Film Festival and will release countrywide on 11 November 2016.
You can check out the trailer for Cuckold starring Charlie Vundla and Terry Pheto here:
Image credit: Instagram