10 Best Movies from South Africa to Watch First

10 Essential Films from South Africa

Ranked native cinema in South Africa’s own creative voice.

1. 

   1. Mapantsula

   1988

   A self-serving Johannesburg petty thief, indifferent to politics, is swept up in the anti-apartheid struggle after a run-in with the police forces him to choose sides. A landmark South African crime drama made in defiance of the apartheid regime.

   Film notes
2. 

   2. Tsotsi

   2005

   A hardened young Johannesburg gangster who steals a car discovers a baby in the back seat, and caring for the infant slowly awakens the humanity buried beneath his violent life. Gavin Hood's Oscar-winning drama.

   Film notes
3. 

   3. U-Carmen eKhayelitsha

   2005

   Bizet's opera Carmen is transplanted to a modern-day township outside Cape Town, sung in Xhosa, as a fiercely independent woman's passions lead a besotted soldier toward ruin. A vibrant, acclaimed musical drama.

   Film notes
4. 

   4. Yesterday

   2004

   A young rural Zulu mother named Yesterday learns she has contracted AIDS from her migrant-laborer husband, and finds the strength to keep going for the sake of her daughter. A tender, quietly powerful South African drama.

   Film notes
5. 

   5. Life, Above All

   2010

   In a small South African town, a resilient twelve-year-old girl fights the shame, gossip, and superstition surrounding her family's illness to hold her household together. A moving drama about a community's silence around AIDS.

   Film notes
6. 

   6. Five Fingers for Marseilles

   2017

   Years after fleeing the apartheid-era violence of his youth, a reformed outlaw returns to his rural South African town to find it under the boot of a new gang, and is drawn back into a fight he thought he had left behind. A striking neo-Western.

   Film notes
7. 

   7. The Gods Must Be Crazy

   1980

   When a Coca-Cola bottle falls from a passing plane into the Kalahari, a Bushman who has never seen such a thing sets out to return the strange object to the gods, his gentle odyssey crossing paths with bumbling scientists and revolutionaries. A beloved slapstick comedy.

   Film notes
8. 

   8. Sarafina!

   1992

   A spirited Soweto schoolgirl is galvanized into the anti-apartheid struggle when her beloved teacher is arrested, joining the student uprising of 1976. A rousing musical drama of youth and resistance.

   Film notes
9. 

   9. Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema

   2008

   This gritty crime saga charts an ambitious Soweto man's rise from car hijacking to running a lucrative building-hijacking racket in Johannesburg, and the price of his climb through the underworld. Based on true events.

   Film notes
10. 

    10. My Octopus Teacher

    2020

    A weary filmmaker who begins free-diving daily in a cold South African kelp forest strikes up an extraordinary yearlong relationship with a wild octopus, and finds himself transformed. An intimate, Oscar-winning nature documentary.

    Film notes