MILISUTHANDO is a coming-of-age personal essay film on South Africa’s Model C generation – the first generation of kids to desegregate “whites only” schools at the end of apartheid. Explored through the memories of Milisuthando, who grew up during apartheid but didn’t know it was happening until it was over, the story is a meditation on power, intimacy, difference, and the weight of loving and fearing your enemy in a time of decolonisation. This film is a co-production with Viviana Gomez Echeverry and Sonia Barrera (Viso Producciones, Colombia).

About The Team

MILISUTHANDO BONGELA is an award winning writer, blogger and editor whose work pivots around the subject of the post-apartheid condition from the perspective of black middle class South Africans and women. She has written extensively about the intersections of race, class and gender in South Africa for publications like the Mail and Guardian, City Press, W Magazine, Dazed and Confused, Aperture Magazine, Elle and Colours, as well as having worked across the arts in the fields of fashion, music, art, publishing and cultural activism. For three years she edited the Arts and Culture section of the weekly Mail & Guardian and is the co-creator of Umoya: On African Spirituality, a podcast that seeks to demystify African Spirituality in the 21st Century. She is currently exploring the post-apartheid condition in South African society, focusing on the psychological effects of racism on Model C educated black South Africans through her first film, a feature documentary currently titled MILISUTHANDO. She has also been selected for the inaugural Women at Sundace/Adobe Fellowship (2020-2021).