U-Carmen Ekhayelitsha is an assault on the senses; a visual and aural feast the likes of which you won't have seen for a long time – if ever. Set in the South African township of Khayelitsha, it is a reworking of Bizet's opera Carmen. Cover your ears and you're watching an African drama unfold in a shanty town, cover your eyes and you're hearing Bizet's Carmen. Put them both together and the result is an astounding burst of sound and colour, and an interpretation of classical opera that defies categorisation.

First time film director Mark Dornford-May has taken an idea he has already produced for the stage, and with great foresight and ingenuity put it on screen. It's actually hard to see how a stage production could beat the screen version, which depends so much for its visual elegance on the location; the real shanty town backdrop and sprawling township that our cast sashay their way through.

The film originated from Dornford-May's work in setting up a theatre company in the South African townships in 2000. When he announced he was holding auditions, two-thousand people turned up; none had ever been inside a theatre let alone on a stage, but were simply looking for work and Dornford-May offered a solution. The result was the establishment of the acclaimed Dimpho Di Copane theatre company. Dornford-May has subsequently staged several other similar productions, but the film version of U-Carmen Ekhayelitsha is his most successful to date, winning the Golden Bear at Berlin this year.

Using cast from his theatre, none of whom had been in front of a camera before, Dornford-May takes Bizet's story and places it in present day Cape Town . Carmen is a sensual and flirtatious woman working in a cigarette factory who falls for a religiously devout policeman who spurns her, only then to fall in love with her when Carmen has tried to forget him. She is above all a heroine for the 21 st century: an independent woman who refuses to be what men want her to be which in the end destroys her. Carmen and her feisty entourage dress in a mixture of traditional African clothes and modern jeans and t-shirt, adding shots of colour and spice to their grimy surroundings. Whilst always dramatic, the mood tips from humorous to tragic with wonderfully theatrical anticipation.

The cast sing in their own Xhosa dialect, distinctive with its tongue clicks, coupled with traditional shimmies, hand movements and chin thrusts. All that's left of Bizet's Carmen really is the story and the score. Dornford-May also injects some traditional African song and doesn't shy away from politics, referencing apartheid and police beatings and killings. What is so amazing is that the idea of Bizet's Carmen sung in Xhosa by an African theatre group works so well; that the meeting of two very different musical and spiritual cultures seem to complement one another.

Even in its very stillest and quietest moments U-Carmen Ekhayelitsha still burns with fire and passion. The cast of unprofessional and inexperienced film actors are nothing short of superb, and like true professionals never allow their stage persona to slip. Pauline Malefane who plays Carmen steals the show and deserves all the praise that's been lavished on her. She translated Bizet's original words into Xhosa, a momentous undertaking that took her six months.

The film also scores on a political and socially affirmative level. One of Dornford-May's goals was to get it shown in the townships and at a price that local people could afford. U-Carmen Ekhayelitsha signalled a change in normal South African distribution practices by holding its premiere in Khayelitsha, in the very building where the last few scenes of the film were shot, for an entrance fee of R10 (about 86p). As Dornford-May has said: “If the industry is to survive, we have to create films black people can relate to and screen them in places where they live.” In the end the film was shown at this venue for a month during which time 1500 people a day came to see it, a testimony not only to a great cultural achievement but also to U-Carmen Ekhayelitsha 's exceptional entertainment value.