Discoveries from Botswana World Cinema

A Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an airplane raises havoc among a normally peaceful tribe of African bushmen who believe it to be a utensil of the gods.

Xixo is back again. This time, his children accidentally stow away on a fast-moving poachers' truck, unable to get off, and Xixo sets out to rescue them. Along the way, he encounters a couple of soldiers trying to capture each other and a pilot and passenger of a small plane, who are each having a few problems of their own.

Njebe and Martha are a childless couple living in Botswana’s capital. Seeking to recover their well-being, they consult a charismatic diviner and healer, in Njebe’s old village, Moremi. They watch their filmed séances on a monitor and reflect with ethnographer Richard Werbner. Moved by the diviner’s revelations, about their intimate lives, they try to make sense of the séances puzzling moments. They wonder about the diviner’s rapid recital of highly ambiguous, archaic verse, his leading them in chants of call and response, and his preaching against Christianity and for restored communication with the ancestors. They express their doubts about the healing treatment.

In East Africa, millions of animals are migrating over long distances. Among them is a young zebra who is trying to escape the fearsome predators that are an ever-present danger.

As Botswana awaits a possible landmark judgment from its high court, seeking to decriminalize same sex relations, Chantel, a 27-year-old lesbian who's both a theologian and a queer rights activist, attempts to start her journey to get ordained as a reverend in Botswana's religiously conservative and homophobic society.

Most people in the world who know a domestic cat understand the wild look in their pet's eye. This film looks at those thinly veiled behaviors between domestic cats and their wild cousins and ancestors, specifically to draw those parallels and to explain to 'owners' what they are seeing when they watch their cat. There are scenes of cats leaping, landing, running up trees like leopards and all the behaviors we are used to seeing in domestic cats, but drawn exactly from their wild equivalent

Chris, an immigrant, grapples with economic chains, a fragile love, and the haunting past of his homeland, Matabeleland. Amidst societal upheavals, he must find a way to retribution and reconciliation in a world that has forgotten him.

Handmade in Thamaga chronicles the founding and work of Bothlalo Centre, a women’s pottery collective and business in the small rural village of Thamaga, Botswana.

The film follows three young leaders under the age of 40 during the historic 2024 elections that ended 58 years of rule by the Botswana Democratic Party. Through their campaigns and struggles, the film captures the hopes, challenges, and urgent demand for new leadership on Africa's youngest and oldest continent.

Surfers, metal heads, and guerilla filmmakers explore their identities and culture in Sierra Leone, Botswana, and Nigeria.

An experimental short film celebrating national queer pride featuring some of Botswana's LGBT creative minds and activists.

A teacher is sent by the government to a remote rural area of Botswana, but is rejected by the native community.

NKASHI: RACE FOR THE OKAVANGO follows the triumphs and challenges of three mokoro (dugout canoe) polers, as they prepare for an annual racing event. It also illuminates their vital role in protecting the Okavango Delta – one of the most unique wetlands in the world that is the main source of water for a million people and is one of the most biodiverse places in Africa that supports the world’s largest remaining elephant population as well as lions, cheetahs, hundreds of species of birds, and much more.

MOSAMO weaves together dreams, hallucinations, and visualisations. In Setswana, the Bantu language of the Tswana people, the word mosamo refers to a pillow that you put your head on when you go to sleep. In this video work, Rrangwane explores the idea that we are most vulnerable when we sleep and that, although dreaming and visualisation can be deemed as vulnerable states, they can also be understood as states that facilitate transformation, as in dreams of disruption, revelation, critique, restoration, spirited schemes, regeneration and unprecedented being.

A social worker investigating teen pregnancies in a rural African village stops at nothing, including fighting her inner-demons, to protect children from abuse. Actionable recommendations from community activists conclude the project.

This film is about the Basarwa-San ethnic minority group in Botswana. Its focus is the dispute around the land status of the Basarwa-San who are traditionally a nomadic group, and their participation in the decision making processes that concern them.