Taking Stock

World Première

For Clive Stillerman, just like his father before him, the shop maketh the man, and the man maketh the shop. The shop in question is the Stillerman family enterprise, Benoni Discount Stores, once a thriving institution, now in slow decline. In his fondly critical debut feature, Ben Stillerman unpicks his father’s complicated relationships with employees, customers, friends, relatives and his own soul: Clive runs his shop with a hail of expletives, grappling with his conscience as a business-owner who lived apartheid from the right side of the counter. Now, in the autumn of his life, Clive ponders over the worth of his legacy, chuckling wryly at his son’s chutzpah for daring to be a filmmaker rather than follow in his own entrepreneurial footsteps. A film about a family business as much as the business of family, this docu-dramedy is a touching generational heirloom, the very essence of film as therapy.

Courtesy of the Director