EXCLUSIVE: What happens when a group of game rangers create their own raunchy pasttime? That’s what director Brett Michael Innes sets out to reveal in Showmax comedy Khaki Fever.
Here, we’ve got the trailer for the South African feature, in which a group of game ranger staff set up a challenge to see who can hook up with the most tourists during a season while avoiding their conservative lodge manager, who makes it clear anyone fraternizing with guests will be fired. The winner is named King of Khaki and takes the losers’ tips.
Innes is the director, with Loki Rothman (Koek) composing the score and creating an original theme song titled ‘Khaki Fever’. Innes wrote the script alongside husband Nick Ahlers and the married couple also produced the film for Nostalgia Productions along with Paulo Areal. Christa Schamberger led on casting. It was shot in both English and Afrikaans.
Top Billing presenter Christopher Jaftha leads the cast opposite four 2025 Silwerskerm nominees – Anja Taljaard and Trix Vivier (both Juffrou X), Liam Bosman (Een Keer Om Die Son) and Ilse Klink (Nêrens, Noord-Kaap). Abel Knobel, Francois Jacobs (aka Kaalgat Karel) and Sean Brebnor (Getroud Met Rugby) also star as rangers. Juanita de Villiers (Reënboogrant) and Izette Blignaut (Binnelanders) complete the cast.
In the trailer, we see the rangers at Zalisa lodge flirting outrageously with guests and anyone else they can find, as the manager tells them their behavior is “totally unacceptable.”
“You drive around like hooligans,” she adds, before we cut to rangers in an off-road truck shouting, “Bad boys for life, within 20 kilometers per hour.” Plenty of flesh and suggestive looks are seen as guests eye both the wildlife and their guides.
The film will get its world premiere at the Silwerskerm Festival on August 22 at The Bay Hotel in Camps Bay, Cape Town, before launching on African streamer Showmax two weeks later (September 5). Shooting took place in the Crade of Humankind.
“Khaki fever is what happens when lonely tourists see ripped game rangers get out of their 4×4 in the shortest of khaki shorts,” said Innes. “If you’ve ever been to a bushveld game lodge, you’ve seen it first hand, so this is a story about wild animals and wilder rangers.”
The director is attached to three of the six films in competition at Silwerskerm, the African film festival, having also written My F*k Marelize and produced The Heart is a Muscle, which won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin International Film Festival this year. He has previously had films such as 2015’s Sink, which was his directorial debut, and Fiela’s Child at Silwerskerm.
Khaki Fever is his second comedy film as director, coming after Daryn’s Gym, which competed at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2022. “I directed a short film for Silwerskerm last year that was about a sleep-deprived mother who was ready to kill her colicky baby, so I wanted this one to be the polar opposite in terms of tone,” he said. “This is a Friday night film, a funny and sexy safari escape with your friends after a long week.”
Showmax, whose parent MultiChoice Group is in the throes of being sold to Canal+, has five originals at Silwerskerm this year, with the others comprising whimsical family film Finding Optel and, in TV pilots category, the reality series Vaal Riviera, the documentary Unspoken War, and the drama series Ontwaak.
MultiChoice Studios has international sales rights to Khaki Fever.
