Discoveries from South Africa World Cinema

South African Film

Documentary directed by Julie Henderson et al.

The brutal and often poignant story of a boy trapped in the body of a girl. It takes us on the journey of a typical Afrikaans child who faces self-hate, societal rejection, doubt and ultimately healing. A story about a transgender child fighting to find their place in the world.

The film narrates the poignant stories of Black families still living under oppression on white-owned land in South Africa, shedding light on the loss of ancestral lands and the ongoing fight for land.

After an incident where Jayden spills coke on his friends' new shirt, he loses it. Ethan declares war on his old best friend, and it gets quite serious.

While a tough cop investigates a series of hateful murders, a ruthless reporter exposes deep, dark secrets from her past to unhinge the case and ultimately her life.

A passionate action movie fanatic from Soshanguve, dreams of becoming a big action star. When he accidentally thwarts a robbery, his newfound fame puts him on the path to realizing his dreams.

A Joburg city slicker needs to survive his royal girlfriend's father during the festive season, at the young woman's very traditional family home.

An ordinary day at a Zulu cultural village. Shaka, their star performer, expresses his frustrations to his co-workers as he sits on display for tourists. When he reaches the end of his tether, his protest reaches Shakespearian proportion.

In the midst of a deadly drug turf war in Cape Town, a gangster tries to secure the future of his young family amidst a community of dangerous rivals with the same goals.

A traditional famer seen as the new voice of Afrikaners. He crumbles when his wife leaves him for another man

Emotionally wounded, blaming her father for the loss of her mother. Nozi navigates through life hurdles in search of healing and peace through music.

What could possibly happen when an invitation goes out for a high school’s 20-year reunion? What if two former school sweethearts reconnect on social media and realise they might still have feelings for each other? Marta (Anel Wood) and Johan (Johan Joubert) are both trapped in unhappy marriages. Johan, who works as a plumber with his school friend Leo (Solomon Cupido), is married to Anja (Laura-Lee Mostert), who also went to school with them. Anja feels Johan is no longer the ambitious man she once knew and gives him the cold shoulder when he tries to get closer.

An English rock band from South Africa try to break in to the profitable Afrikaans music market... without even being able to speak the language! Stone Cold Jane Austen is a dark comedy about the trappings of fame and the type of ego it takes to be able to 'make it' - all the way down on the Southern tip of Africa!

A young woman adrift between worlds, one rooted in her past and one promising her future. Something is absent, missing, irretrievable.

Urbanites deal with baking, homework, app development, and the impending end to life as we know it.

A young woman adrift between worlds, one rooted in her past and one promising her future. Something is absent, missing, irretrievable.

Urbanites deal with baking, homework, app development, and the impending end to life as we know it.

Tom has it pretty good. He has a lot of things his grandparents never had; an electric toothbrush, two different can-openers, glasses that block blue light. He works online so he rarely needs to leave his apartment. Social interaction makes him anxious. Tom does not really need anyone, and that suits him fine. Or does it? When the day is done and he lies in bed, something tells him he is missing something or someone. One night, a knock on his door presents him with a challenge. Sometimes radical personal change is only a small step away if we would only take it.

A detective on the brink of solving a series of ritual child murders is forced to choose between his faith in the material world and his fear of the uncanny.

Blikkies, Rampie and Fiona are best friends who struggle to keep their heads above water in Johannesburg. When they get the opportunity to break into arrogant rich people's houses, they jump at it, but when Rampie gets access to luxury kitchens and good ingredients, he starts whipping up mid-burglary meals. This leads to a series of cook and robber burglaries that are not always equally successful, and two incompetent detectives - one of whom has a personal relationship with Fiona - are hot on their heels. Meanwhile, Fiona struggles to get a diagnosis for her mother's serious lung disease, and the trio questions whether the theft is promising enough. When the cooking and burglary hobby goes too far and they find out that Fiona is pregnant, they decide to pull off one last big burglary, but they may have just made enough enemies along the way to spoil their plans.

Brief history of the British settlers who came to South Africa in 1820.

In order to prepare a meal for a visiting parishioner, one farmer shoots another farmer's buck. Hilarity ensues.

Langa, a young man trying to make the most of his lot in life, learns that his father is about to marry his pregnant girlfriend. But after the new Stepmother moves in, things soon start to turn for the worse for the young man when the conniving woman, unbeknownst to both Father and Son, starts using muti, a form of traditional medicine, to take control of the household. With the Father completely under her spell, she convinces him to kick young Langa out of the house and onto the streets, all in an evil plan to bring her own son, Sipho, into the fold. With her diabolical plan in motion, she and Sipho manage to kill the Father, but their crime is not a prefect one as a policeman witnesses Sipho fleeing the scene and both Stepmother and son are ultimately brought to justice.

Boys... Jonathan is back! After the success of his gold status debut DVD, Jonathan gives advice to humanity again. This time he goes deep! He discusses the deeper question of life: What is the point of it all? Why is your health so important and why does the French eat frogs? In Life201 Jonathan looks at the different aspects of arts and culture and in his own way, gives his humble opinion. At the end of the lesson he brings the audience to the realization that a good and happy life can be summarized in one simple statement. Life201 was recorded in front of a live audience in the heart of Wittas.

Maggie has been waiting years and years for the love of her life to return, not really knowing what to do with her life because she just cannot understand why he left. But just when she has started fresh and married a sweet man, her lost love returns.

The story centers on a group of friends who are dedicated and enthusiastic volleyball players. One of the girls, Lola, however, believes that there is more to life than just volleyball, and together with three of her friends, starts investigating the possibility of attending university after school. Lola and her friends are mocked by an opposing volleyball team, who believe that university will suck them into a life of studying, with no time to focus on sport.In an effort to prove them wrong, Lola and her friends challenge the others to a volleyball tournament, and after emerging victorious, Lola proves that it is possible to be both physically and mentally fit.

When David’s sister is stabbed by a group of thugs, and his father tragically suffers a heart attack upon hearing this news, the young man is forced to take the law into his own hands when the police seem helpless in bring the criminals to justice. Injured and alone, David must track these dangerous men down and avenge his family’s misfortune by himself if ever he wishes to see justice served.

The fiercest, strangest, and wildest creatures in the animal kingdom face off in a countdown of the most incredible animal moments ever recorded. Across arid deserts, through dense rainforests, and into the deepest of oceans, witness remarkable scenes of animal activity, from deadly showdowns to wild romances.

When a group of terrorists hold tourists hostage in the Kariba Dam, Captain Caprivi and his team must perform heroic deeds in order to save them.

Sequel to Neill Blomkamp's District 9.

Ntombi Kubheka was an anti-apartheid activist and member of the armed wing of the banned African National Congress (ANC). The Security Branch of the South African Polic (SAP) regarded Ntombi as a senior ANC member and had classified her as being a feminist. In 1987 Ntombi was kidnapped, interrogated and tortured by the Security Police. Her body was disposed of. It was only 10 years later during the TRC Amnesty application that the family were made aware where Ntombi's bones were buried and finally were able to give her a funeral.

A detective agency gives a complex smuggling case to the seemingly absent-minded PI Boetie Flenters - never thinking he will solve it. Monica Terblanche (alias Hester Smith) is blackmailed to smuggle diamonds by Da Silva (aka Hennie Gous) and his accomplice. In return, she will receive the negative of an incriminating photo of her father. The investigation takes Boetie to the village of Geenfontein. When he bungles things he is fired and takes jobs as a bus conductor, hospital porter, lifeguard, lounge singer and plumber. Then he meets Hester, who explains her predicament, and they decide to work together.

In this story of South meets West, Don P is one of the most feared gangsters in the township, with his xenophobic partner in crime JJ. It's South African gangsters meeting a Nigerian white collar crime kingpin by the name of Carlos Ortega, all in the name of fraud, when these two elements meets all hell breaks loose.

Fried Barry is a heroin junkie who spends his days in an abandoned building walking around tripping from his latest hit, going through his ups and downs and reliving old memories.

The film portrays the lives of two gay men and a transgender woman who have applied for refugee status in South Africa. Despite legal protection of LGBTIQ individuals, Flavina, Mussa and Junior encounter stigmatization, persecution and violence, which turn them into human rights activists.

In the old African Wild West, a peace-loving family man moves to a vacant farm in search of a new life. His hopes are shattered when his son is badly beaten and his wife murdered by a gang of ruthless thugs. He is left helpless, until fate intervenes. He is rescued and nursed back to health by a good Samaritan living alone in the hills, a reformed gangster, who trains the man to exact his revenge.

Dennis Buckland returns to the farm he grew up at, located in South-Africa in order to investigate the colonial history of the area of his youth.

A chance encounter with a neighbor helps a musician deal with his creative block.

What is better than getting a lesson from a man that knows everything? Nothing! Listen to Jonathan as he educates you on everyhting that makes life worth while: How to sing, how to drink, how to talk and of course advise about the chicks! This recording was done in front of a live audience in Emperor's Palace. It's easy to see why Jonathan's videos has been viewed millions of times.

Agter die Ligte is a South African musical film documenting a massive, one-night-only Afrikaans music production held on March 20, 2012, at the Coca-Cola Dome in Johannesburg. The film showcases singer-songwriter Joe Niemand alongside 900 performers, including Romanz, Coleske, and a symphony orchestra, exploring themes of faith and, specifically, faith in an unlimited God.

South African Movie

Investigates the deaths of best friends Sharnelle Hough (17) and Marna Engelbrecht (16) at their hostel at Stella High School in North West.

Set within the aftershocks of South Africa’s Apartheid, a gay farmhand writes letters to his lover.

In Cosmic Africa we join Thebe on his celestial quest into the heart of the Egyptian Sahara; the precipitous cliffs of Dogon country in Mali; and the ancestral land of Namibia's hunter-gatherers. His experiential journey weaves together past, present and future, combining astronomical perception and history in a rich cosmic tapestry. By exploring the various stages of human awareness and development, Cosmic Africa takes viewers into the world of shamans, sky lore experts and diviners.

The first film to ever show what life was in South-Africa under the Apartheid state. The film was released as an anonymous production under the aegis of the Pan Africanist Congress in 1970.

Nandi and Sinethemba take center stage in Blind Spots, a story that traces their intertwined journeys through love, vulnerability, and self-discovery in a digital age. Nandi, a charismatic but restless graphic designer, drifts through a series of short-lived romances, always chasing a deeper meaning she can’t quite grasp. Everything shifts when she meets Sinethemba—a free-spirited, enigmatic woman with silent wounds of her own. Their connection is instant, electric, and impossible to ignore.

A young mother with a sickly child is left with nobody to care for her when the sole breadwinner, her brother, is killed. With nowhere else to turn, she takes matters into her own hands going for a life of crime, in the process forming an all-woman gang that goes head-to-head with a violent ATM bombing gang and the police force.

Edgar Combrink, a perpetual re-offender, is released back to the gang troubled Cape Flats to a family he hardly knows. To a forgotten suburb rife with unemployment and social decay in one of the most unequal cities in the world; Cape Town.

Born intersex in a rural village in South Africa, Nthabiseng's mother is forced to make radical choices if she is to protect her infant from being taken away to the apartheid hospital where black people often inexplicably die. Nthabiseng tells their story directly to the camera and traces a history that moves from a tiny village of only five houses in rural Limpopo, to their bruising first experience with a doctor in town at the age of thirteen which leaves them feeling that something is wrong with them. The feeling persists till they are at university in Johannesburg and realize that, far from getting the help they had imagined, their story is simply a fascinating research case for the doctors they visit. As they begin to meet intersex activists, they see that the isolation and erasure of intersex people is systemic and that there are many others like themselves. Nthabiseng the activist emerges and steps into their power.

When Max, the owner of a brick manufacturing company, is given 50 carats worth of diamonds to smuggle out of the country for a fee of R5 million, he is completely unaware he is being set up.With an undercover cop closely keeping surveillance, Max sets out with two comrades and while on route to their destination, the diamonds mysteriously go missing. In the end, Max and his accomplices are arrested by the undercover cop, and it’s revealed that they are the ones that tried to double cross Max by secretly stealing the diamonds for themselves.

Internet friends in Johannesburg, New York City, and Seattle explore intimacy in their offline lives.

Filmed over six years, Mother City follows the David versus Goliath battle as activists and domestic workers take on property power and politics in Cape Town – a city still disfigured by spatial apartheid 30 years into democracy. The story begins when the government sells a school, meant for affordable housing, to a private developer. Set against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, this intimate and at times funny narrative documentary charts Nkosikhona (Face) Swartbooi leading a defiant war against government and property developers – on the streets, in the supreme court and in parliament.

A young boy loses his parents in a car crash all he has left is his loyal dog "lelik".He now must go live with his drunk uncle who doesn't care at all for the boy.