Alison

What it's about:

Raped. Disemboweled. Nearly decapitated. Dumped on the outskirts of a nature reserve, dead...or so they thought. She needed a hero that night, so that's what she became. This is Alison's tale. A tale of monsters, miracles and hope.

What we thought:

Going into the film I knew what the film was about. I knew the story very vaguely as I remembered it being talked about around me. I grew up in Humansdorp in the Eastern Cape. Give or take 70km from the very spot where Alison Botha was brutally raped and stabbed. Where she almost died.

Let me start out by saying that this film is not for the fainthearted. Telling the story in a documentary style, the film features real-life interviews as well as re-enactments with actors. The re-enactments feel so real that it will make you feel queasy. And this is mostly because just trying to imagine what Alison went through is unimaginable as no one should endure what she did.

As far as the real-life interviews go, the film introduces the amazing people who were involved in Alison’s ordeal and story. From the guy who was the first to stop for Alison and stay by her side up until she was wheeled into the hospital, to the surgeons who have never witnessed anything like this in their lives; to the judge who sentenced her two attackers; Alison’s story shocks you to the core.

And while what happened to her was incredibly brutal, the aftermath of the case, Alison’s depression and how she managed to pull herself out of it and decided to turn her life around, is an inspiring story which makes up a big part of the film.

The film is a deeply personal account of Alison’s journey so far. Of overcoming what happened to her, but also of how she became an inspiration to others through public speaking and the release of her book, titled I Have Life. 

The film shows the good, the bad and the very ugly of Alison’s story. And as she herself says, it is “a tale of monsters, miracles and hope”.