Docs showing at this year’s Festival

6SENSE is the inspirational story of a visually-impaired music producer, Mxshi Mo, whose gqom music takes the world by surprise and helps overcome the troubles of their disability and upbringing.

Upon the passing of her uncle during his pilgrimage to Mecca, director Chloé Aïcha Boro returns to her home country of Burkina Faso to document the familial disputes surrounding the inheritance of his Coulibaly estate.

When the Israeli Defence force invaded Southern Lebanon in the summer of 1982, they stole the archive collection of photographs and film from Beirut’s Palestine Research Center. In this hypnotic and deftly constructed experimental film, Palestinian director and artist Kamal Aljafari reclaims these images, which have been stored for decades by the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

This intimately made film chronicles the life and family history of the great Palestinian actress Hiam Abbas, most familiar to mainstream Western audiences for her role as Marcia Roy in the TV series Succession. Abbas has French and Israeli citizenship and was born to a family of Muslim Arabs in Nazareth, so her very existence is deeply rooted in historical complexity. Directed and narrated by Abbas’ daughter, Lina Soualem, this timely documentary is bathed in the empathy of the personal, even as it cannot escape the fact that the place that birthed so many of Abbas’ memories is under existential threat.

As the title of this engaging documentary suggests, depression is often unacknowledged in indigenous Southern African cultures and is instead written off as something that is ‘for white people’. But, as the film makes abundantly clear, the impact of mental health is a fundamentally human experience that transcends all boundaries, racial or otherwise. In Black People Don’t Get Depressed, a filmmaker despairing for her mental peace embarks on the journey of facing her depression and speaks to other African people about their experiences of mental illness. This is a timely and vital film for South Africa, where issues around mental health cut across all layers of society.

When young Japanese journalist Shiori Itō fails to get the police to investigate and prosecute her charge of sexual assault against a politically connected bureau chief, she takes it upon herself to arrange a press conference—and then proceeds to do the investigation herself, including all of the forensic work, releasing the results as a published book and film. Black Box Diaries is a raw, riveting, and singular work that plays like a procedural thriller for the social media age, although it is not just the alleged perpetrator being investigated but the whole Japanese political and justice system.

The kora is so integral to the culture of West Africa that the top players are akin to royalty. Over the past 50 years, the 21-stringed instrument has transcended its West African origins, becoming a truly global sound, with artists as diverse as Herbie Hancock, Bjork, and Damon Albarn among its devotees. Kora Tales tells the definitive story of the mythic West African harp, with one of its modern masters, Ballaké Sissoko, as our guide. Driven by the resonant rhythms of its two central subjects, this enchanting documentary is based on nearly half a century of research by co-director Lucy Durán.

“I loved the feeling of culture exploding”, says legendary actress, model, and artist Anita Pallenberg in this extraordinary documentary about her life, based on an unpublished autobiography found after her death, in 2017. Pallenberg was a massive star in the ’60s and ’70s, but she had already established her place in the counterculture even before that,. From meeting Andy Warhol when she first arrived in New York to her relationship with the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones and Keith Richards, her story is a portal into a world that has long since passed but whose influence lives on everywhere.

Cape-Helena explores the lesser-known history of St Helena Island, a place where our narrator looks for answers on his father’s past, but instead learns of the many other stories concerning colonialism, slavery and war.

Diary of an Elephant Orphan follows Khanyisa, a baby elephant newly orphaned, on her journey in becoming strong enough to join a herd of her own. This is easier said than done, however, as Khanyisa’s health is unpredictable, leading to her rescuers battling to keep her alive.

This affectionate family portrait explores the history of a divided Korea from a deeply personal perspective. South Korean director Hyun kyung Kim, who now lives in the United States, grew up in a home where, as she explains, war is still being waged 70 years after peace was declared. Using her family narrative—along with contemporary footage of North Korean defectors—Kim explores how the past cascades through generations, and how imperialism and war cast long and disruptive shadows on the lives of both families and nations.

On Christmas Eve of 1989, a woman was killed by two intruders in her family home in Uganda. Decades later, her daughter Patricia Bbaale Bandak, returns in an attempt to heal the trauma that has followed her throughout her life.

Dead Lagoon documents the deterioration of the Kpeshi lagoon due to dumping, deforestation, and climate change. It is told through the lens of Nicholas Badu Quaye, an environmentally conscious potter whose workshop is near the lagoon.

When a massive explosion destroyed a large part of Beirut in August 2020, it was yet another blow to a city that has been witness to its own destruction seemingly countless times. For the director and crew of the feature film, Costa Brava, it presented the existential challenge of whether to continue making their movie. Torn between their belief in the power of cinema to affect change and a deep cynicism that Lebanon will never transcend its social turmoil and political corruption, they decide to forge ahead, as chronicled in this remarkable film.

Every Little Thing is a documentary about hummingbirds you never knew you needed to watch! In the hills of Hollywood, Terry Masear cares for wounded hummingbirds, her life transformed by the fragility and resilience of the tiny creatures. Masear wrote a book about working with the world’s smallest birds, which led to filmmaker Sally Aitken following her over a busy caretaking season in Los Angeles. Exquisitely photographed and phenomenally heartwarming, watching Masear take care of the birds is so therapeutic that it is easy to see how her relationship with the winged wonders changed her life.

Fading Footprints explores the life of the Ju/’hoansi tribe, one of the last remaining Khoi-San tribes, as 60 000 years’ worth of wisdom faces the threat of disappearance through modernisation.

The Friendship Bench is a grassroots mental health initiative in Zimbabwe led by determined psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda. Through raw and powerful interviews, it delves into local struggles and cultural perceptions of mental health, highlighting the organisation’s role in providing non-judgmental support and destigmatising mental health issues in rural communities.

This masterfully produced look at the life of hugely influential African American poet and activist Nikki Giovanni is made instantly engaging by the presence of Giovanni herself. Framed by its protagonist’s famous statement that ‘the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans’, the film fuses a rich archive of historical footage and interviews with the young Giovanni with contemporary access to the poet and her peers. Exquisitely edited and infused with empathy, Going to Mars is a richly detailed portrait of a life driven by a commitment to duty, truth, and community.

When the US Army withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban immediately took over, declaring themselves the de facto government of the country. Just days later, Egyptian documentary maker Ibrahim Nash’at travelled with his camera and an interpreter to document the transition to Taliban rule. Having been granted permission to film on the condition that the image he presents of the Taliban is the one they want. Nash’at’s response is to simply film things as they are. A brave and complex work, Hollywoodgate is an indictment of both Taliban rule and the American occupation that preceded it.

Illusion of Distance delves into the life of Boeta Allie, an 80-year-old coloured man who grew up in District 6, as he searches for his childhood friend, Isaac, years after the Group Areas Act forced them to separate.

Ek wil nie myself verloor nie is a heartfelt documentary which portrays Carol de Swardt’s voluntary death in Switzerland, with the assistance of organisations that are also lobbying for the decriminalisation of assisted suicide in South Africa.

I Did Not Ask for This! tells the story of Tsakane Motshweni, who experienced sexual violence in a juvenile detention centre. The documentary looks at the culture of violence Tsakane grew up around and the factors that sustain it.

In Japan, around 80,000 people disappear every year. Most of them are eventually found or return home but thousands of others simply vanish. They are known as jōhatsu, which means ‘the evaporated’. This beautifully photographed film explores the phenomenon, talking to people who have chosen to disappear and those looking for them, as well as the ‘night movers’ who help people to disappear and reset their lives in places where no one knows them. Johatsu provides an intimate window into the lives of those who have decided, for one desperate reason or another, that they need to start anew.

Love, Your Neighbour is a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the South African suburbia, as a filmmaker attempts to connect with his neighbour through their intercom systems during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Love Me True is a groundbreaking documentary that uses animation to portray a weekend in the dating life of Laurence, a French woman who discovers the perils of dating apps, men, and modern romantic life.

London Recruits seamlessly fuses dramatic reenactments with contemporary interviews and a rich pool of archive footage to tell the story of more than 60 young white people who were recruited by the ANC in London in the late 60s and early 70s to help revitalise the ANC Underground in South Africa through covert operations. This riveting and smartly edited film provides a visceral sense of what it must have been like for the young men and women who made the transition from swinging Londoners to undercover agents working for the African National Congress on the Southern tip of Africa.

“It’s just like China used to be”, says a Chinese businessman surveying a massive clothing factory in a sprawling industrial park in rural Ethiopia, where a dusty farming town finds itself on the frontier of globalisation. The park’s formidable Chinese director needs every bit of her considerable charm to push through an expansion that will deliver 30,000 new jobs but will also displace the local community. Meanwhile, Workinesh, a local farmer, and Beti, a factory worker, have staked their futures on the promise of prosperity. Filmed over four years, Made in Ethiopia explores China’s historic but misunderstood impact on Africa.

Masiphumelele explores the history of an informal settlement established in the early 1980s and the present-day work of the youth in the community to document its culture and identity through photography and writing.

Three decades after the end of apartheid, Cape Town remains one of the world’s most unequal and racially segregated cities. Against this backdrop, the Reclaim the City movement emerged a collective of dispossessed people who are challenging the notion that urban centres are only for the rich. The film follows the activists over several years as they make one of the inner city’s abandoned spaces their home, and use it as a base from which to lobby for the needs of Cape Town’s working class. Beautifully observed, Mother City is a deeply human look at the politics of urbanism.

In this remarkable fusing of the documentary and memoir form, young Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir uses a miniature reproduction of the Casablanca neighbourhood she grew up in to reconstruct her memories of living under the iron rule of a grandmother so religiously devout that photographs were prohibited because they are haram. Inventively blending shots of the puppet stage with live footage, the film does a terrific job of evoking the viscerality of childhood. But Mother of All Lies is about more than growing up with an ultra-religious grandmother. It is also about how fundamentalism—in all its forms—constrains our true selves and potentials.

Set on the remote Mercury Island, off the coast of Namibia, My Mercury explores the life of Yves, a conservationist who protects the endangered gannet and penguin colonies on the island from the threat of invasive seals.

My Land is Burned uncovers the lives of Syrian families and their caretakers in a refugee camp in Arsal, Lebanon. Conveying their hopes and struggles, the documentary beautifully captures their survival.

No Other Land is filmmaker Basel Adra’s powerful first-person account of living in the Palestinian village of Masafer Yatta, located in an area of the West Bank occupied by the Israeli army, who have declared it a training ground and are intent on removing the local population and their homes, even though they have been living there since the 19th century. As demolition order after demolition order is carried out by the soldiers and their tanks and bulldozers, the families are forced to rebuild some semblance of a home—they have nowhere else to go, no other land.

In a poignant exploration of death, Oor My Dooie Liggaam explores how children perceive and understand death. Set around the funeral of Andries Du Toit, filmmaker Wilhann Strauss interviews several children about the afterlife.

A quest for answers results in so much more in the film Our Land, Our Freedom. We follow a Kenyan woman looking for her fathers’ remains, but finds herself swept up by the struggles of her people and their desire to reclaim their ancestral land.

Set within a fishing community on the West Coast, Of Bread and Water explores the life of Witbrood, a fisherman for over 50 years, through his relationships with his wife, daughter, and work.

Playing the Changes documents the life of Jazz pianist Darius Brubeck, as he recounts a life of pioneering the musical, political, and cultural landscape in South Africa, leaving behind a legacy of liberation through Jazz.

Raw (Rou) is a lamentation on the slow death of a South African rural town, Nthoroane, through an exploration of the myths, disasters, and miracles that surround the town’s history.

In The Return, South African writer Heidi Grunebaum returns to the German city of Hungen, from where her grandmother was forced to flee eight decades earlier to escape the holocaust.

Meet skate soccer teammates: ambitious and volatile Smallee and talented but troubled Dungu. The friendship that has kept them afloat is now at risk as their paths take very different directions.

This densely hyperactive masterpiece of documentary filmmaking tells the story of how the CIA weaponised African American musicians during the Cold War without their knowledge, using them and their music to extend American dominance around the world, particularly in the resource-rich Belgian Congo, where Patrice Lumumba had just been assassinated. Featuring many of the era’s key musical and cultural talents—from Miles Davis to Miriam Makeba to Nina Simone—the film is remarkable, providing a unique perspective on the 20th century and a scorching reproach to US foreign policy.

Set between Cairo and Dubai, Samar…Before the Final Picture explores a story of resilience and healing through Samar, a victim of an acid attack who devotes herself to helping another woman who has suffered the same fate.

Lobi Ekosimba gives a snapshot of daily life in DR Congo’s Goma, where people try to thrive despite the civil war raging in the background. The documentary chooses to foreground the regular lives of the Congoleses to show their resilience.

Set between the COP26 and COP27 climate conferences, Temperature Rising follows the lives of three climate activists as they tackle the climate crisis in Southern Africa, exposing the politics, barriers, and struggles activists face.

Wild Coast Warriors explores the fight against the establishment of oil exploration operations by the Shell corporation in the Wild Coast in an effort to prevent the irreversible destruction of the environment and surrounding communities.

We are on the map is a narrative documentary in which Santiago Rodriguez Cardenas uses Google Earth to tell the story of his neighbourhood, using images on the map to narrate his community’s aspirations.