Tsotsi director Gavin Hood and lead actor Presley Chweneyagae arrived to screams of applause in the international arrivals hall of Johannesburg International airport on Sunday morning.
As they stood on a balcony overlooking the arrivals hall, they took turns holding up the Oscar statuette Tsotsi won for best foreign film.
The Tsotsi team will spend the coming months promoting the film around the world.
At a press conference after arriving at the airport, Hood said anything else in the pipeline will be ”irrelevant”.
”There are offers. There is pressure. Suddenly things are thrown at us and they’re not all good. It’s quite a difficult time in terms of demands.”
Hood said he is receiving four or five scripts a day and does not have time to read them.
”We’re saying no a lot. We don’t want to offend people but it’s Tsotsi, Tsotsi, Tsotsi for the next two months.”
He and lead actor Presley Chweneyagae looked excited after their long flight from Amsterdam. They had most recently attended the Amnesty International Film festival there.
They said they had been nervous on the aircraft flying in, with no idea of the level of support they would receive. ”We thought maybe we’d have a little shower and change.”
Hood said they had been travelling for two months and after their flight ”didn’t smell so good”.
”If we had taken a shower we would have been lynched.”
Earlier, the sounds of vuvuzelas and toyi-toying had echoed through the entrance area of the airport as a busload of well-wishers arrived to greet the Tsotsi crew.
The film changed veteran actor Ian Roberts’s perception of the movies in South Africa, he said at the airport, where he was also awaiting the arrival of the crew.
Roberts said that for years he had a perception of movies he had been involved in ”going nowhere”.
”Tsotsi has changed that. They have great potential,” said Roberts, who played the part of a police officer in the film.
”Although it is the smallest role I played, it’s the biggest in the sense of what it has done,” he said.
The crowd had arrived on buses at the airport, which was abuzz with travellers.
Standing outside the international arrivals hall as the first bus arrived with passengers singing and blowing vuvuzelas, US visitor Connie Kubicek said she had heard of the movie overseas.
After being informed of its success and what the singing was all about, she said: ”That is excellent.”
Amid the singing, Roberts said: ”I just love it. I wandered outside to see what the singing was about and I just loved it.”
David Mokoena, from Tembisa, said the Gauteng provincial arts department and municipal councillors had organised residents to join the celebrations.
He said he had not seen the movie but had enjoyed watching the highlights on television.
Mokoena and fellow Tembisa residents, dressed in uniform T-shirts and peaked caps to mark the occasion, were singing in Zulu: ”Tsotsi, we are very happy with what you have done in America, you have made us proud in South Africa.” — Sapa