The Alternate Endings of Tsotsi: How did Hood determine which ending to include in the theatrical release? “We went and recruited a very diverse group of people. People from very different economic backgrounds, racial backgrounds, language backgrounds and when I say that, another surprise is people say, ‘Languages?’ In South Africa, we have 11 official languages. It’s not just a black and white country, if you’ll excuse the pun. But it’s all these languages [that] are as different as European language and Sutu is as different from Zulu as Russian is to English. In fact, there’s barely a word in Sutu that’s vaguely similar to Zulu. They’re completely different...
The point is that we had many people from different backgrounds and different groups to test on. That’s one of the reasons why we wanted to minimize the subtitles, because even in South Africa, a lot of people would now and then be needing subtitles. Some people speak five or six languages. I speak three. Some people speak one or two. So we got a broad range of people and in terms of the ending, what was interesting was when you have this very diverse group of people, when they come into the screening, at first there’s a sudden awkwardness because there are people from wealthier backgrounds and from poorer backgrounds. And there’s a sense of, ‘Ohhh, okay...’ They all sit down and after the movie what was so exciting was to see how people wanted to talk to one another. People who perhaps had not related to someone from an impoverished shanty town and similarly people from a shanty town who’d not related to someone from a more wealthy area, wanted to talk and say, ‘See my life?’ And we had to just open people up to talk. So that was the first thing that was great. The screenings gave us a sense that the film would work across economic and racial divides. That was the first thing.
The second thing in terms of choosing which ending to use, the big thing was which ending made people talk more. The process of the alternate endings on the film, both the one where he gets shot and the one where he gets away, is that neither of those led to the same debate, believe it or not, as the ending that we finally ended up with. Because the ending that we ended up with leaves it open where you go, ‘Well, what is going to happen to him?’ Then the natural question is, ‘Well, what do you think should happen?’ And that question kept people talking for far longer after screenings than either of the other endings.”
How Will Gavin Hood Follow Up Tsotsi?: “That’s a really tough question. The thing that I’m interested in as a filmmaker is [a movie that is] exciting and keeps you on the edge of your seat and at the same time leaves you with something to talk about with your friends when you go out for coffee afterwards, as opposed to, ‘That was a cool movie. Let’s have sushi.’”
