More of a cinematic meditation than your typical popcorn flick, this beautiful new film from directors Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar has already garnered major international recognition and will be screened in South Africa for one week only, from 8 May.

Just about every frame of Variations on a Theme, a new South African film directed by Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar and shot by Gray Kotzé, has potential as a standalone work of art.

Some frames perfectly express the melancholic beauty and wonder of the serene and slightly mystical, empty, undulating landscapes that surround Kharkams, the remote Northern Cape town in which the film is set.

Others capture, documentary-style, a way of life that is too rarely seen on cinema screens. The camera takes us into the kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms of the poor, the elderly, the marginalised, people whose rural existence renders them half-forgotten.

There are frames that are almost entirely black, the darkness broken only by a few flickering candles and hints of moonlight filtering in through an open window. Or scenes featuring huddles of villagers sat on their deeply shaded porches discussing the latest gossip or news.

The film mixes scenes that could pass for fly-on-the-wall footage of everyday life with a kind of magic realism. While there is a central storyline that grapples with the sociopolitical complexities of communities still suffering the consequences of historical exploitation, there are also fable-like mini-narratives that illuminate something...