A 26-minute documentary, the last project that journalist and presenter Terence Pillay produced and directed, will screen at the 2022 Durban International Film Festival.
Pillay, who died in January after a long illness, was known for his investigative prowess and passion for justice for the man in the street.
Magdalene’s Lies was written by award-winning journalist Julie Laurenz and produced by Pillay. They both directed the production.
The short film looks at Laurenz’s investigation into how a woman from Wentworth in Durban swindled an American out of millions of Rands under the guise of community work and her family’s alleged dire needs.
The synopsis reads: “To some Magdalene is a ‘Mother Teresa’; to others she is a rotten crook. When a global pandemic ravages her community, the real Magdalene is revealed.”
A mix of re-enactments and footage of interviews of the victim and alleged culprit, Laurenz said she knew from early on in her investigation that the foreigner had been scammed.
“After working so many years on productions like ‘Carte Blanche’ and ‘Special Assignment’, you develop that gut feeling. When he (the victim) was telling me the story of all these tragedies that had come upon this woman and her family and how he helped, I kept on thinking, ‘this can't be real’. But you’ve got to give people the benefit of the doubt.
“It was literally when I spoke to her, and you can even pick this up in the documentary, that the minute I heard her voice over the phone, I knew. It’s an instinct that comes from years and years of doing these kind of stories. You don’t want to be disappointed but as it turns out it was true.”
Laurenz, above all, said it showed the level of trust the victim had.
“When he talked about how his mom gave some of her pension money and how he took out loans … I mean, he had this woman’s family pictures on his mantelpiece at home.
“I think sometimes as South Africans, and especially as journalists, we get jaded. We kind of almost expect the worst and unfortunately for this poor man, it turned out it was the worst. He came into it from a caring person and a good Samaritan point of view.”
Laurenz said they wanted to also give the woman a fair chance.
“I think that is also why in the documentary we try to understand it and give her the benefit of the doubt. Which is why we went to speak to Monique Marx, a sociologist and criminologist, to try to unpack and understand why people commit crimes like this.”
She said over the years of her career as a journalist, she had witnessed many good people try to do great things for Wentworth.
“It is such a difficult, complex community, so it’s so frustrating because there are lots of people from the community who are trying to do good work there.”
Laurenz said it was difficult for her to finish the project without Pillay.
“It is and it was really, really hard because he got sick before we finished it. We were busy with the final mixing. Terence and I started working together officially from the around 1993. We knew each other so well. We loved working together.
“When you do long investigations and you get so far in that you can’t see the wood from the trees, you need someone like Terence. We were good at working together and making sure we were on the mark.
“But Terence really cared. He cared a lot about children, he cared a lot about elderly people, anybody who didn’t have a voice Terence would genuinely take it on – probably more emotionally than I did.”
*Magdalene’s Lies will screen on durbanfilmfest.com from July 22 to 30.
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