Docs screening at this year's Festival
About Bloody Time
About Bloody Time tells the story of how lack of access to free sanitary pads and menstrual health education coupled with societal stigma and fear impacts her life during that time of the month. …
Americans, Mongrels & Funky Junkies
South African filmmaker Jo Menell is most well-known for the cult classic, Dick, which featured shots of 1000 penises accompanied by audio commentary from women. The nature of that film, however, belies a rich career in film and …
Beyond the Frontlines
Through the work of Dr Samah Jabr, a psychiatrist and writer at the An-Najah University in Nablus Palestine we view the appalling conditions suffered by the inhabitants of Palestine from an analysis of constant containment, uncertainty and violence. …
Billy Monk
Billy Monk was a bouncer and nightclub photographer in 1960s Cape Town. Fifty years after Billy Monk captured this hidden slice of Cape Town’s history, this intimate documentary brings together key characters in his story – one that is far from black and white. …
Breakfast in Kisumu
Shot across 16mm, VHS, DV, and Digital, Breakfast in Kisumu is a personal homage to the 20-year journey of renowned professor and political activist Rok Ajulu. Filmed across 6 countries between Europe and Africa, with a proxy-archival quality, it follows Rok’s account of his struggles as an exiled freedom fighter of the post-colonial, apartheid era. …
A Bright Light
Karen Dalton was for a brief period the musical queen of Greenwich village in the sixties, inspiring Bob Dylan and seemingly the obverse of the far more outgoing Joan Baez. …
Bromwell Street
Bromwell Street tells a human story of people feeling as though they’ve been thrown away by the current regime and left to fend for themselves. …
Buddha in Africa
In a Chinese Buddhist orphanage in Africa, the film follows the story of Enock Alu, a Malawian orphan from a rural village growing up between the contrasting worlds of his traditional African culture and the strict discipline of the Confucian, Buddhist value system of the Chinese. Against the backdrop of China’s expanding influence on the continent, the film evokes some of the tensions and uncertainties surrounding the growing relationship between China and Africa.
…
Cape Town’s Beach Calligraher
Cape Town’s Beach Calligrapher creates visual poetry as we learn about calligrapher and letter artist, Andrew van der Merwe and his art while we watch him create his beach calligraphy. …
Changing lives through dance
Dancing has changed the lives of many, including Crystal Engelbrecht. …
Chris the Swiss
A unique and enthralling mixture of investigation and animation as the director goes in search of the reasons why and how her cousin, Chris, an investigative journalist, came to meet his death in war-torn Croatia. …
Deadbeat Dads
The contrasting stories of two women and a young man who grew up without fathers within the mixed-race and black communities and how they believe this has shaped their lives. …
DOCi Shorts Programme
DOCi – Emerging Filmmakers Programme is a community-oriented program designed to reach previously-disadvantaged young people. The course is a full time, fully immersive, programme run over 11 weeks. The aim is to teach an introduction to documentary …
Dying for Gold
Through testimonies from communities in mining families throughout Southern Africa and extensive use of contrasting archive materials DYING FOR GOLD tells the story of how we have arrived at this extraordinary situation. DYING FOR GOLD brings to the surface the real cost of South African gold. …
Election Day
This powerful 8-minute film provides a devastating perspective on the hugely divisive 2018 electoral campaign in Brazil. …
Fall into the Sky
Black women narrate their experiences of race, colourism, Afrophobia and Xenophobia in this powerful short documentary. …
Fanon Yesterday, Today
Hassane Mezine links Fanon’s activism and writing with contemporary anti-imperialists struggles in Portugal, France, the USA, Niger, Algeria, South Africa and Palestine …
#Female Pleasure
5 women from very different backgrounds – Hassidic, Muslim, Shinto, Hindu and Catholic – confront the tenets of their paternalistic societies. …
Film Festival Film
Film Festival Film explores the position of marginalised young South African filmmakers and interrogates the attitudes and perspectives of older and relatively privileged filmmakers who have already established key positions in the local industry …
Friends of the Liesbeek
Friends of the Liesbeek is an initiative, started 25 years ago, that combats litter and waste water pollution in the Liesbeek river. …
Hidden Queens
This short documentary is imparted with compassion and focuses on the personal story of Thandokazi. …
Hustler
The carefully observed short film introduces us to Mampuse and Ben, who spend their days collecting and selling recyclable materials to provide for themselves and their families. …
I am not my hair
After years of searching for hair perfection, a young Coloured woman and her friend set out to re-define beauty for themselves, despite deeply rooted self-esteem issues and pressure from the media and society. …
If We Say That We Are Friends
Class and race divisions are still very explicit and prominent in South Africa. …
It’s a Man’s World
A documentary in which we explore what it is like for females in the male dominated taxi industry by following the lives of two young women, Zarah Modack and Azraa Berling. …
Johannesburg, California
Along the Mojave Desert Ben Stillerman finds Johannesburg, California – named after the South African city …
Jozi Gold
The World Premiere of JOZI GOLD is a story of wealth, greed and poisonous mountains. Johannesburg has produced a third of all the gold in the world. Now the gold is running out, the mines are falling apart and toxic waste turns water into poison. Former Jehovah’s Witness Mariette Liefferink is on a mission to force the mine bosses to clean up. The film is by Fredrik Gertten and Sylvia Vollenhoven based on an original story by Adam Welz. …
Like The Sun
This impressionistic documentary chronicles the obsession of the filmmaker with her mentor, who disappeared from her life several years ago. …
Makukhanye
No matter one’s past or the darkness that haunts it, light can always be found. Siphosethu (Mhambi) Dyonasi leaves behind a painful past but has found light and healing through art. …
Meeting Gorbachev
The film could as much be Mikhail Gorbachev interviewing Werner Herzog as the other way around. …
Men United
A men’s consciousness-raising group started by one man in Khayelitsha to help change men’s attitudes to women, starting with gender-based violence. …
Miles Davis
Nelson provides a broad but detailed account of the man who changed the shape of jazz and defined the very notion of cool. …
Mother, I Am Suffocating.
This is a brave and powerful film, at once both intimate and alienated, that explores issues of colonialism, shame, whiteness, integration, and liminality, while speaking to the diasporic experience of time and space. …
My Culture My Music
Connecting to the body and soul, healing and providing a sense of being; music connects people. …
My Friend Fela
My Friend Fela explores the life of legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti from the perspective of his long-time friend Carlos Moore. …
My Story Is Yet to be Written
For four decades the cinematheque thrived before political changes sent it into decline …
My Transgender Life
A journey to the township to find out what it is like for a woman stuck in a man’s body and the struggles she faces. …
A Night At The Garden
Shocking archive footage of 20 000 American Nazis filling Madison Square Gardens in New York in 1939. …
O.R. Tambo
The film depicts Tambo as a master diplomat, whose vision and foresight created the network of global alliances that constituted the anti-apartheid movement – the largest solidarity movement in history. …
On Her Shoulders
Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old Yazidi, survived genocide and sexual slavery committed by ISIS. Repeating her story to the world, this ordinary girl finds herself thrust onto the international stage as the voice of her people. …
Playing God
This rigorous documentary explores Feinberg’s unenviable position of having to place a financial value on human lives and justifying the differing amounts paid out. …
Public Figure
Public Figure explores the rise of social media influencers and the power they wield in an increasingly online world. Made with honesty but without judgement, the documentary examines the psychological effects of everyday social media use …
RBG
Premiering at Sundance, this Oscar and BAFTA nominated documentary chronicles the life of legal pioneer and pop culture phenomenon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. …
Scenes from a Dry City
This beautifully crafted film looks at the recent Cape Town water crisis from a host of different perspectives. …
The Silence of Others
The film follows the participants in the historic Argentine Lawsuit who prosecute the abuses in Spain from beyond the borders. …
Someone To Blame
On 27 October 1971, the body of South African anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol fell from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square Police Station. In an inquest the following year, his death was ruled a suicide by …
The Sound of Masks
Atanásio Nyusi, a compelling storyteller and legendary Mapiko dancer, takes us on a visually dramatic journey through Mozambique’s past and present. …
The Space
The Space tells the story of the theatre and community that gave birth to some of South Africa’s most important writing and acting talents and its most significant works of protest theatre. …
The State Against Mandela and the Others
This remarkable documentary provides an engaging account of the Rivonia Freedom trial, allowing viewers access to an event that took place more than 50 years ago. …
Still a Man
This touching short explores albinism within Xhosa culture and the conflicting nature of living with albinism and going through initiation. Thulani discovers it is rather his actions that prove he is still a man. …
Still I Stand
This touching short follows Andrew as he describes his life after the death of his wife …
Street Survival
Street Survival, follows Tumisang Kokorwe as he spends 24 hours as a homeless person …
Stroop
In this roller coaster ride between Africa and Asia, two first time filmmakers embed themselves on the front-lines of the rhino species genocide where they are given exclusive access to the war unfolding. …
Tabu
This freewheeling short film introduces us to Tabu, an itinerant salesman of aphrodisiacs, who travels to Kinshasa to sell his goods. …
Talking about Trees
Charming and sad in equal measure is this paean to the love of cinema as two of the one-time luminaries of Sudanese cinema attempt to revive a cinema in a country where movies have been banned for years. …
Thongo’Lam
Family has an impact on each of us. For Jessica, her family life has been difficult. Jessica’s search for identity leads her to discover that she needs to let go of pain and heal herself before she can heal her family. …
Three Identical Strangers
Set in the 1980s, Three Identical Strangers chronicles the story of three men who were reunited through a series of astonishing coincidences after being born identical triplets, separated at birth, and adopted by three different families. …
Tidal
Since her near-fatal BASE jumping accident, Lisa’s love for the ocean and its life has allowed her to heal. …
Unsafe
A documentary about school violence in South Africa, told through the eyes of a young man who stabbed his teacher and then transformed his life through sport. …
Village vs Empire
Village versus Empire, dramatizes the threat to Island life and nature, through the performances of an artist, Dohee Lee, born on Jeju Island. …
Waves
This film sensitively captures the lives of these girls as they move between the city streets and the ocean. …
Zolani Mfihlo Ibali
As an upcoming artist that composes and writes Jazz and Soul music it is really hard to get people to listen to your music, especially if you’re a black young man with a dream living in the townships. …
Zulu Return
The documentary follows the fallen hip hop hero Afrika Bambaataa’s spiritual quest to South Africa as he faces the effects of abuse allegations against him in his own life. …