MILISUTHANDO
Price: $395.00 Code: 2716 |
Directed by Milisuthando Bongela
2024, 128 minutes
An invitation into a poetic, memory-driven exploration of love, intimacy, race, and belonging from a woman who grew up during apartheid but didn't know it was happening until it was over.
Filmmaker Milisuthando Bongela grew up in the Transkei, an 18-year-long pro-apartheid, Black separatist territory that dissolved with Nelson Mandela’s liberation and presidency. In Milisuthando, she works across political, personal, and spiritual dimensions to explore ancestry, power, and the construction of race and racism in the context of the South African apartheid regime, which Bongela was unaware she was growing up inside of until it was over.
Subjects & Collections
2025 African Studies Cinema Studies Cultural Studies Directed by Women Family Relations Political Science Sociology Women's Studies World History
Festivals & Awards
Official Selection - Sundance Film Festival
Official Selection - San Francisco International Film Festival
Official Selection - AFI Fest
Special Mention: Best Director - International Documentary Association
Nominee: Best Feature Documentary - International Documentary Association
Nominee: Best Writing - International Documentary Association
Reviews
"Combining a treasure trove of archive footage, home movies and personal photographs to tell the history of the Transkei, Milisuthando is also a clear love letter to the filmmaker’s own family."
— Marina Ashioti, Little White Lies
"Models how to confront history and complicated legacies."
— Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter
"The formal experimentation of the film is entrancing and dreamlike, feeling out the borders that our communities build for us and complicating narratives about race and oppression in modernity."
— Alissa Wilkinson, Vox