André Stoltz

Southern Africa, 1880. A mixed-race woman living in the arid Karoo takes in a lost white child and raises him as her own. Nine years later, he is forced to live in the Knysna Forest with a group of woodpeckers that claim to be his family.

Lenie and Marius, an old married couple's only son and his family go away on holiday and leave them on their own for Christmas. How do you celebrate the festive season when you are without a child or crow? You take the town by the horns.

Fictionally in the heart of Mpumalanga, in the small town of Fransenburg, stands the Fransen Hotel. Once the town's pride. Once a beacon. Once. Now barely a one out of five star on Trip Advisor. Ferdie Kruger, the middle-aged hotel manager and his small-town staff, struggle to keep the substandard hotel's doors open.