But in South Africa there are no juries, of course - it's the judge who rules on what a reasonable man accepts is a just verdict. And the judge in this film is played by Nigel Hawthorne, who grew up in Cape Town and is now one of Britain's most respected actors. At 69, Hawthorne knows there are no sure bets in the movie industry - his Oscar nomination in 1995 for The Madness of King George was followed by fourth billing in Sylvester Stallone's Demolition Man - but he agrees that A Reasonable Man has extraordinary potential.

"Gavin shows great confidence and flair," Hawthorne says between camera takes. "It does look promising, but you can never say until it's finished." Actor Ian Roberts, who also has a part in A Reasonable Man (budget R10-million), calls it a milestone for the South African film industry. "It's all about money," he says. "Gavin wrote a South African story good enough to be backed by overseas investors. And they've trusted us to get it right. As actors, we're ready. It's like a prize fight: you spend years fighting your way up through the ratings until you get a chance at the title. This is our shot at the world crown." If A Reasonable Man is a hit, a number of careers will get international recognition.

Hood himself is too busy to talk: he's written the film, raised the money, and now he's directing it and playing the lead role of defence attorney Sean Raine, dashing between the camera and the courtroom set with his legal robes flapping, checking the lights, the sound, the costumes and a video playback of each take.

Dozens of people have to stand idle while he takes one minute to wonder why South Africans have been embarrassed for years by films made here in English. "This is a milestone movie, for good or bad," Hood says. "It's exciting, but we are all aware that we must get this one right. It makes me sweat. But if we do get it right, never again will the world market ask why we didn't use Whoopi Goldberg for the sangoma." All the actors in the cast are South African and so is the crew. The cameraman, Buster Reynolds, stood next to the late Jamie Uys two decades ago making The Gods Must Be Crazy, a simple comedy shot in Namibia to avoid the cultural boycott that reputedly earned more than $100-million abroad. It's still the one to beat - so far.

"Gavin's film is better," Buster says firmly. "It will be even bigger than Gods. It's another great story and everyone in the world will understand it."

No-one doubts we have a thousand great stories waiting to be filmed, but it's taken 35-year-old Hood seven years just to get this one ready for the camera. A Wits law graduate, he switched to acting and studied at the UCLA film school in California to learn how to develop a script to the point where big investors would pay to film it.

It wasn't easy. The Gods Must Be Crazy starred a Khoi San man without a line of dialogue whose mission was to return a Coke bottle that had fallen from a passing aircraft.

In A Reasonable Man the murder of the baby in the remote Tugela Valley and the subsequent trial pit the power of traditional beliefs against the laws of the new Constitution.

The courtroom exposes the post-apartheid culture in Soweto and Sandton, in which sangomas and the tokoloshe are as real as the cover-ups of war crimes.

The script is not just original, it's interesting enough to be funded by France's Pandora Cinema - whose recent releases were the Oscar-winners Shine, from Australia, and Kolya, from Czechoslovakia. That's why Scott Meek, the executive producer of the trendy new movie Velvet Goldmine is here at Hood's side.

Editing of A Reasonable Man will be completed by March and the movie will be entered for the Cannes Film Festival in May: that's how confident Pandora is that South Africa will be big news in the movie industry next year.

And they haven't once doubted that Hood can do it, instead of hedging their investment with a couple of big-name imports.

"It's the right way to go," Meek says. "Gavin feels that many films made in South Africa with overseas money have been betrayed by overseas stars playing South Africans. The performances haven't convinced him. It's accepted that the only way to make a strong international picture is to make it work for its own audience first."

The cast are familiar names of local stage, television and film: Ken Gampu, Vusi Kunene, Michael Richard, Nandi Nyembe, Graham Hopkins and Rapulana Seiphemo trade lines with Hawthorne, Roberts and Hood on camera. Gampu says it's like working with family. Kunene, who worked with Hollywood names in Cry, the Beloved Country, and has made five years' worth of hit TV series, says their shared belief goes way further than the script.

"It's talking about 'us' for the first time," he says. "It shows the world how our justice system works. Many South Africans know more about the US legal system from TV shows than they know about their own. As a law graduate, Gavin is putting it up there on the movie screen in a plot full of twists and turns."

One twist is that Kunene, the crusading defence attorney in TV's Justice For All, is now playing the ruthless prosecutor in A Reasonable man, determined to convict the hapless youth. "Many people in this film come fact to face with their demons, and they choose which path they will follow," Kunene muses. "My character, Sam Linde, is shaken by this dilemma. No matter how sophisticated we think we are in the city, the power of the old beliefs cannot be ignored."

Nandi Nyembi goes further than that. She plays the pivotal role of a sangoma who uncovers a terrible secret in the life of the clean-cut Sean Raine, who puts his own life on the line to defend the young herdsman.

"I am a sangoma myself," says Nyembi, who made a pact with the spirits to put acting ahead of her calling. "Gavin's script is true to life. We discussed the role in depth: only a sangoma can reveal to Sean what has been hidden for so long, and exorcise the horror inside him. I went through a similar experience myself with the spirits. Denying my calling made me very ill, and I suffered great pain to get through it. Millions of South Africans will relate to this story; these beliefs are the bedrock of our faith and culture."

Supernatural thrillers make for box-office success, of course, but there's a feeling of destiny about Hood's long trek to make this film. It's based on a 1930's court case he discovered by chance during his univeristy studies.

While developing his first draft he made a television series for the SABC, where he met actress Janine Eser. They married and moved to London, where Hood did his rewrites, and where Eser was cast in a film with Hawthorne. To show Pandora he could direct a movie, Hood and Eser made a 22-minute short called The Storekeeper, about crime and retribution in a rural area. The film won awards at the Nashville and Melbourne film festivals this year, and it's now in the running for an Oscar nomination.