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This endearingly offbeat comedy didn't become an international success until 1984, when it became the highest-grossing foreign film ever released in the United States. Writer-director Jamie Uys scoured the wilds for three months to find a tribesman who was genuinely unfamiliar with modern life. His efforts were not in vain: Uys' lead, N!xau, is disarmingly sweet and charming as the film's hero, Xixo. Though the white South Africans are comically portrayed as buffoons, some viewers were nevertheless offended by the film's portrayal of the Kalahari bush people as "primitive," and the potentially racist shadings of the film's success.