From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear this show at kCRW.com.

My guest writer, director, Ralph Seaman, has made a film Gangsters Paradise

that is a film that is both, I think, documentary-like and folkloric. A literal film noir,

I guess, that's a look at the life of a major criminal in South Africa. Ralph, first of all,

thanks so much for being here. Oh, thank you for having me, Elvis. If you can do me a favor and tell the audience what the film's about.

Jerusalem, Gangsters Paradise, it's really a crime saga set in South Africa in the post-apartheid years.

There had been this crime explosion, which started just before the end of apartheid and has really gone on until the modern day.

I'd sort of been fascinated to try and find out what the roots of thattheid and has really gone on until the modern day. I'd sort of been fascinated to

try and find out what the roots of that were, where this explosion came from, and what was really

behind it. And I'd come across the story of a gangster, a gang, a syndicate, really, who were

stealing high-rise buildings in downtown Johannesburg. And at that point, I knew I really had a story.

It was big and it was bold, and it really seemed to encapsulate a lot of what, you know,

a lot of what it was about.

That time, though, Jerusalem and one of the mentor to Lucky is Nazareth.

I mean, there's certainly a lot of kind of old testament biblical references in this crime story.

You know, it's set in the period immediately after apartheid, and it is really a time of hope.

It is a time.

And at the very beginning of the film, there's some footage I'd shot back in 94, where you really get the joyousness.

And the idea that South Africa post-apartheid was a kind of a new

Jerusalem. It was a new beginning. It was a new kind of a promised land. You know, I think you look at

some of those vistas in the films and, you know, Johannesburg's on this high plateau at six and a half

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