Milisuthando. A documentary about growing up in apartheid

Invited by writer and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga, the South African director Milisuthando Bongela, one of the most orignal voices of contemporary African cinema, presents her debut film Milisuthando, a documentary in the form of an essay about growing up in the apartheid regime.

South Africa was ruled by an apartheid regime from 1948 until 1994. Almost two decades earlier, in 1976, the state of Transkei was created in a political experiment promoted by the government as a promise of independence to the Black population. In fact, it was nothing more than a materialisation of the dream of segregation. The young filmmaker Milisuthando Bongela grew up within the borders of this illusory form of liberation and, accordingly, did not know she was she was living in an apartheid regime until it ended.

Her film Milisuthando, presented in the official section of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and selected to open the New Directors/New Films at MoMA the same year, revisits the history of Transkei through personal files, and poses uncomfortable questions about this troubling and frequently unknown experience of apartheid in which, once it was ended, segregation began to open up wounds.

Invited by filmmaker and current international resident of the CCCB Tsitsi Dangarembga and within the framework of D'A Film Fest, the South African filmmaker Milisuthando Bongela presents her film in Barcelona.

Milisuthando, 128 min, 2023