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Lifestyle
Julia Cain, Lecturer in Screen Production and Film Theory & Practice, University of Cape Town

Milisuthando: a powerful documentary that will get South Africans talking about identity

A still from the documentary about growing up in South Africa. Milisuthando/Rob Pollock/Francis Burger

Milisuthando is a debut feature length documentary film by Milisuthando Bongela. Taking the form of a personal essay, it’s an intimate story about family and ancestors, about “inside apartheid’s experiment” and negotiating the complex world of post-apartheid South Africa.

Bongela, born in 1985, offers a version of her life story in five parts organised poetically and thematically. The film is built on her experience of being born in the former Transkei “homeland” – one of the “independent states” designated by the racist apartheid government to institutionalise “separate development”. It explores what it means to have grown up in this society.

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