Ntshavheni wa Luruli’s Elelwani is a Venda-language feature film strongly rooted in Venda culture, belief systems, and oral story-telling traditions. Based loosely on the first Venda- language novel of the same name by Titus Ntsiene Maumela (1976), the film tells the story of Elelwani, a young woman from a rural Venda village who leaves the village to attend university in the city. Maumela’s novel is updated to the contemporary post-apartheid era, and when the film starts, Elelwani has recently graduated and has been offered a bursary to further her studies in Chicago. Elelwani returns to her village to tell her family of her future plans, but her staunchly traditional parents want her to marry the tribal king and refuse to allow her to marry Vele, or to go and study in America.