The Gods Must Be Crazy

The Gods Must Be Crazy. 1980 CAT Films (released to DVD by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment).
Starring: N!xau, Sandra Prinsloo, Marius Weyers, Louw Verwey, Michael Thys
Narrator: Paddy O'Byrne
Written, Produced & Directed by Jamie Uys
Buy The Gods Must Be Crazy as a single DVD, or with its sequel, The Gods Must Be Crazy II, as a two disc set, both from Amazon.

You may know this as "the movie about the Coke bottle". It's more than that.

A tribe of bushmen live deep in the Kalahari Desert in Africa, perfectly content with their simple lives. One day, a Coke bottle is thrown out of an airplane. Thinking this is another gift from the gods, Xi (N!xau) and his tribe find many uses for it. Unfortunately, unlike anything they've had before, there is just one Coke bottle, and the tribe members begin to experience emotions they had never thought of before, jealously, envy, anger, hatred, and finally, violence after two children get into a scuffle over the bottle, and one of them gets hit in the forehead with it. Xi decides the bottle is an evil thing, and sets off on a quest to throw it over the edge of the world, but not before encountering Western Civilization.

Meanwhile, Kate Thompson (Prinsloo) decides to leave her journalism job behind in the fast-paced city of Johannesburg for a teaching job in a remote village in Botswana. Also, Andrew Steyn (Weyers) is a biologist studying the local animals. He drives a Land Rover that either constantly needs to be repaired, or when actually working, is completely unreliable. Not only that, Sam Boga (Verwey) leads a group of guerrillas being pursued by government troops after a failed coup.

All three major plotlines do eventually collide, as Steyn and Xi collaborate to save Kate and her schoolchildren when Boga's rebels take the school hostage. Xi eventually reaches the "edge of the world", and disposes of the Coke bottle.

Highly recommended.