Plot Summary

Seventeen-year-old Gabriel Lombard’s life changes overnight when a car accident kills his mother and leaves his father so overwhelmed by grief that he retreats to a clinic. Forced to leave the leafy suburb on the slopes of Table Mountain, Gabriel moves into his grandmother Lenie and Aunt Lotta’s crowded home in Woodstock. Rather than confront the loss of his mother, Gabriel shuts himself off. He keeps people at a distance, hides behind an indifferent attitude and escapes into increasingly elaborate fantasies. Even during therapy, he avoids confronting what he is feeling, choosing imagination over grief. That begins to change when he meets Sasha. Suddenly determined to catch her attention, Gabriel enters a national poetry competition. There is only one problem: he has to produce the poems himself. Al wat ek weet is adapted from Marita van der Vyver’s acclaimed young adult novel of the same name, which has been prescribed reading in schools across South Africa. It marks the third feature collaboration between filmmakers Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar, following the award-winning Carissa and Variasies op ’n tema, which is also being screened at this year’s Silwerskerm Festival.