Tina Kakadelis
The near-universal experience of summer for children is a time of freedom when they’re no longer constrained by the terror that is the school day. The sunshine breeds excitement, potential, and a little childish recklessness. South African director John Tregove comes to the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival with the world premiere of The Smell of Apples. It’s an adaptation of a famous South African autobiographical novel of the same name by Mark Behr, written in 1993. Both the film and the novel examine a country in the midst of apartheid through the viewpoint of a White child.
Eleven-year-old Marnus (Dawian van der Westhuizen) would probably describe his life as perfect. His dad (Hilton Pelser) works a lot but always has time to play. Marnus’ mom (Maude Sandham) is sweet and kind. He has a sister who he argues with in a harmless, sibling-like manner, and a school friend, Frikkie (Wian Carstens), who is basically a member of the family. Rounding out the home is the nanny, Doreen (Celeste Matthews Wannenburgh), who’s the real engine that keeps the house running. Of course, through the adult eyes of the viewer, it’s easy to see all the darkness swirling around Marnus’ life. Over the course of five days, the harsh realities of the world around him and his father’s role in such darkness become obvious, even to a sheltered child.
Presented at face value, The Smell of Apples bears many similarities to Jonathan Glazer’s staggering Holocaust film from 2023, The Zone of Interest. Both look at times of violence, segregation, and the systemic institutions that uphold these actions through the banal aspects of these evils. The films don’t put the viewer in the direct sightline of the horrors playing out, but never let us forget that we are in such close proximity to the pain these characters are doling out. The viewpoint of The Smell of Apples, however, is what separates them. The Zone of Interest point of view is of a family whose patriarch is the commandant of Auschwitz, with more of the focus falling on the parents. Marnus is our guide in The Smell of Apples, so it’s less about the banality and more about the innocence of a child who hasn’t quite figured out the world around him.
It’s this point of view that ultimately keeps The Smell of Apples from being a profound exploration of apartheid. The film also becomes murky when one learns more about the source material and the author behind it. Behr, much like Marnus, grew up in the apartheid era. Three years before the book was published, Behr confessed to the African National Congress that he had acted as a spy for the government, but it wouldn’t be until three years after the book was published that he would declare that to the public. The Smell of Apples hesitates to really excavate the experience of a White child in the 1970s. The film leans too heavily on the coming-of-age aspects of the film without burrowing itself into the time and place of its setting. Perhaps that feeling comes from the perspective of an American whose knowledge of South Africa, especially during the apartheid era, is not as robust as someone who experienced it. Even so, this disconnect between time, place, and character holds the movie back from digging into the heart of the matter. It’s an ugly heart, no doubt, but to make a film about apartheid has to be unafraid of making even the complicit feel shame in their refusal to choose a side.
The Smell of Apples refers to the idea that the fruit can look perfect from the outside, but be wholly rotten within. One could argue that anyone who is content to live with apartheid doesn’t care that the core is rotten. Those who find it abhorrent wouldn’t be swayed by the supposed picturesque look. It’s easy to say that as an adult, but The Smell of Apples is a coming-of-age story about a child learning the depths of evil humans are capable of. A bracing, yet necessary lesson.
