Family connections cross cultural and geographic boundaries, and whether it is a mother returning to her roots with her child in Qwa Qwa in MFE2 Dilo-Dilo or a mother and her son dealing with his academic failings in India in Roll No. 52, the power of family bonds overcomes adversity. A son unravels the reasons for his mother’s isolation in the Belgian film, Noham, while in The Taste of Pork Belly, a young boy revolts at the lengths his mother will go to acquire this delicacy for him. We follow Aaron, a young man in Belgium, as he strives to keep his younger brother, James, safe in a complex world in The Kids Will Be Alright. Exploring both the challenges faced by young adults and the role they play in their families; this delicate portrait immerses the viewer in an ordinary and fulfilling life.

Maternal relationships are often complicated, and in Hoda – Mother on Hold, tattooed choir singer, Coptic Christian, and fighter against adversity, Hoda, pours her deep maternal longing and care into Mariam, a resident at a children’s home in Egypt. Simultaneously she struggles with her relationship with her own mother, which has always been fraught with conflict. Twelve-year-old orphan Nesma is the titular heroine of Nesma, in which she pretends to be her deceased caregiver to avoid returning to the orphanage. Pre-recorded tapes of her carer’s voice and mimicry of her actions fall short when the orphanage requests an in-person check- in. An orphan is also the show stealer in the delightful Leapt Niches. It shows the connection between the six-year-old Allie and her grandfather, with whom she unexpectedly moves in. He lives in a fantastical deep-sea exploration submarine and finds sharing his space with a new inhabitant a challenge. Allie covers every conceivable surface with drawings, much to his dismay. The resolution of their conflict is a mesmerising, animated immersion into the wonders of bioluminescent creatures.

A fractured relationship between a father and his daughter is the theme of Thursday, which follows the pair who struggle to find common ground while in search of a meal. The search for nourishment and mutual understanding is entwined in this exploration of societal expectations of fatherhood and intergenerational communication. Generational legacy and a shared business interest bind Faizel and his son Shuaib in For His Sake. Set in the heart of Ida’s Valley in Stellenbosch, this intimate portrait of a family barber highlights the strong family connections and their shared history with the local community.

Not all family connections are welcomed though, and when Aziz, an ISIS fighter, takes an incredibly young European ISIS convert as his second wife, his first wife, Amuna, is not pleased. Filmed in the Syrian desert, Walud focuses on ISIS as one of the most extreme versions of the patriarchy and sheds light on the silent and often invisible resistance of women in parts of the Middle East. The searingly honest film is loosely based on the filmmaker’s own sister’s life. Also rooted in the director’s personal life is Dou. Jing Zhao’s family history of domestic violence and her deep interest in Chinese mythology are the basis of this otherworldly and contemporary adaptation of a Chinese folktale from the 18th-century tale collection, Liaozhai. A young woman chooses to escape from her dictatorial husband’s abuse when she transforms into a fox and haunts his every move.

No More Pool Time tackles the impact of climate change and the role of personal responsibility in combatting it. Philip builds a pool for his daughter, Luna, in Germany. Can he justify filling it with 50 000 litres of water while his partner tries to raise money for a drought-stricken village in Africa? The protagonist in Sweden is submerged in the pedantic bureaucracy of the Swedish system. His existential struggle leads him to the conclusion that perhaps Sweden is not quite as unique as he had imagined.

Stay Out of the Sun is a collaboration of three young students in the USA interrogates the messages they have received throughout their lives about skin tone and the long-lasting effects, overt and subliminal. Including excerpts from historical advertisements promoting toxic skin-lightening products, the long shadow of racism and colourism is explored from a very personal viewpoint. A personal portrait is at the heart of Marie & Me. A young woman reconstructs her identity and confronts her tumultuous past as an escort in an attempt to resolve the trauma she has faced. Her attempt to find hope in the darkness of her history and rise above it is a story of courage, compassion, and self-forgiveness. None of these characteristics is evident in The Penitential Act. Penance and punishment are the main thrust of Father Upton’s preaching in the church to which John returns after his release from prison. Hellfire and brimstone are the bedrock of the priest’s belief system, and John finds no solace in this dark tableau of religious fervency.

Formative bonds of love between parents and children, the estrangement between a man and his faith and our connection to the earth – so many nuances of connection are explored in this compelling programme of student films. This array of short films is a testament to the creativity of student filmmakers. The wide range of topics explored, creative style and cultural perspectives offer audiences the opportunity to celebrate the young directors of the future.

Institutional depravity and the failure of safeguarding are explored in the films We Did Not Consent and Flying Carpet. In the first, the shocking revelation that for decades, a secret unit in London’s Metropolitan police infiltrated local activist groups and formed romantic relationships with their targets is revealed. Three of the women personally involved during this time revisit scenes from their lives to reclaim the narrative and make sense of what happened. Another form of abuse, institutionalised paedophilia in Portugal, is unearthed in one of the many true stories found during this devastating investigation. Flying Carpet follows Ricardo, a teenager searching for a way out of a ruthless reality that traps him and everyone around him.

Receiving first prize in the International Competition at Winterthur International Short Film Festival in Switzerland last year, Genealogy of Violence explores the outcome of a random and a routine identity check. A woman watches in dismay as two policemen in an unmarked car methodically pat down her boyfriend as he stands in front of the car, under the dismayed eyes of his girlfriend. The imbalance of power and the brooding potential for violence are threaded through this atmospheric and claustrophobic dissection of a seemingly ordinary encounter.

Power and secrecy are uncovered in Chaudhary Sahab when Chaudhary’s granddaughter discovers that he has betrayed everyone’s trust in the most brutal way. The eponymous antihero of the film is considered by his family to be a pure soul, but he is taking advantage of everyone’s trust as he practises his dark desires in secret. Another patriarch is found fallible in B(l)ind the Sacrifice when a son begins to question his father’s claim that he is able to speak to God directly.

Several films surface the notion of the private being political and interrogate personal freedom and state interference. Working against the system, an impulsive Chinese American 17-year-old and her Iranian American boyfriend search for the Morning After Pill in rural Tennessee in The Truck. A Move follows Elahe’s return to her hometown of Mashhad, Iran. Influenced by the Woman-Life-Freedom movement, she assists her parents in relocating after 40 years. Hoping that the move will signify a broader change beyond the new apartment, the film explores the political reality in Iran through a very personal lens. Fleas highlights a menacing home situation without the possibility of escape. Following a bout of xenophobic attackers, Tonderai, a young Zimbabwean boy living in a South African township, fears the worst as he waits for his mother to return from work. The simple act of fetching water for his gravely ill brother poses a life-or-death risk for him, as he has to venture to the communal amenities to bring his brother safe drinking water. 

Two brothers are the focus of Ashes Are Burning. They deliver vegetables in the hills of Córdoba, Argentina, but Bruno, the eldest, wants to leave town. Other films with a focus on young people and their struggles in life include Aicha, where a 17-year-old girl struggles with an emotionally distant mother as her life takes a tragic turn. Yulieth, a brave and rebellious teenage girl from Chilapa, becomes a teenage mother, while her developing identity is caught between the impulses of her dreams and her reality. In Chilapa Girl she faces the difficulty of growing up in a wild territory where natural beauty coexists with the hostility of machismo. 

Even younger, 10-year-old Tom finds a family picture, and the fantasy world of childhood seems to vanish before his eyes. He falls back into repressed memories in Frater, which explores the heartrending portrait of the family he once idealised. Brett is another young man left to his own devices in Punter. He navigates the underbelly of the Johannesburg gambling world as a seemingly harmless horse racing bet jeopardises the surprise he has prepared for his father’s birthday. Majonezë reflects on the powerful desire for rebellion, which grows in young Elyria as she plots the fulfilment of a bitter, but necessary, act of revolution. In Grandma Nai Who Played Favourites, it’s Grandma Nai who is surprised and sneaks away from her peaceful afterlife after overhearing that her queer grandson is about to get engaged to a woman. While Grandma escapes the afterlife, a screenwriter travels back in time to meet her younger self after suffering a panic attack before an interview in Being You.

The House That Never Sleeps accounts an interview with his idol, aspiring writer Sbu Dludlu grapples with the past and the present as writer Ayanda Mkhize has cloned himself to be able to write and market more of his pulp-fiction books. Another local film, King George, features the controversial and charismatic owner of King George strip club in Lower Woodstock in Cape Town. George Megalos is brought to life on screen after the runaway success of the stage play of the same name. Locals resent George and picket outside his club, believing it tarnishes the neighbourhood’s reputation. However, when property developer Shane Wyntock buys up the block and serves George an eviction notice, George must unite with his club’s eclectic members to save his business. Another awkward neighbourly relationship is explored in Catkiller when Ivan’s cat, Gretel, is attacked, and his neighbour Bear saves her, and an unexpected bond is formed.

Human loss and grief are examined in Dears in the Headlights. Through Philly, a woman whose brother has been killed by a drunk driver and their mother Caro’s advocacy, the film examines the many ways we confront loss. For Philly, taxidermy becomes a way of preserving things that have died, while Caro channels her grief into activism. It is a striking reminder to celebrate life, honour the living, and transform pain into purpose. From the shadows of sorrow, light emerges, guiding us toward healing, hope, and the courage to move forward. The gratitude for an extra lease of life is showcased in Unsavable, when Mauro meets Angel, a stranger whose life he saved.

Familiar with death and the vagaries of human desire, few philosophers have been as insightful about the dark side of the human psyche as Carl Jung. It’s his work that is drawn upon to paint a harrowing portrait of the human condition. Combining poetry, dance, music, and archival audio, Danse Macabre explores the dark and tragic aspects of the conscious and unconscious minds. It explores the parallels between modern psychology, aspects of Yoruba culture, and East Asian understandings around life force and energy. The film is a dissection of performance, synthesising styles from a range of geographies, including references to Yoruba dance, songs and proverbs; contemporary electronic music; Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal; Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique; and the work of Marina Abramovic. Underscoring the film is the wisdom of ancestral memory, depicted via the embodied knowledge of the Yoruba Egúngún masquerade.

There are also lighter moments of celebration on offer. Sporting prowess of an unusual kind is featured in Swim Hard and Memoirs of Amanda. At 74, despite a lifetime of low self-esteem, Amanda sets her sights on a seemingly insurmountable goal – completing the 109 km Cape Town Cycle Tour for the 23rd time. Her commitment and drive are mirrored by a group of dedicated swimmers planning for the 2028 Olympics in Swim Hard.

This year’s programme of short films promises to enlighten, educate and entertain and will introduce some unforgettable characters to audiences. As many of them are real, you may have encounters beyond the screen with them after the festival ends. The short films are a reminder that life is made of moments that, when viewed from a different perspective, can alter our worldview.

AICHA by Sanaa El Alaoui (Morocco)

ASHES ARE BURNING by Lucas Leônidas (Argentina)

BEING YOU by Minenhle Luthuli (South Africa)

CATKILLER by Isabel Vaca, Arturo Mendicuti (Mexico)

CHAUDHARY SAHAB by Amit Pahel (India)

CHILAPA GIRL by Juana Lotero López (Colombia)

DANSE MACABRE by Tobi Onabolu (Benin)

DEARS IN THE HEADLIGHTS by Julia Jansch (South Africa)

DISTANT by Nagbhushan Deshpandey (India)

FLEAS by Jordy Sank (South Africa)

FLYING CARPET by Justin Amorim (Portugal)

FRATER by Valentin Guiod (France)

GENEALOGY OF VIOLENCE by Mohamed Bourouissa (France)

GRANDMA NAI WHO PLAYED FAVORITES by Chheangkea (Cambodia, France, United States)

KING GEORGE by Ari Kruger (South Africa)

MAJONEZË by Giulia Grandinetti (Italy)

MEMOIRS OF AMANDA by Lamar Bryce Bonhomme (South Africa)

PASTA NEGRA by Jorge Thielen Armand (Canada, Colombia, Italy, Venezuela, Bolivaria)

PUNTER by Jason Adam Maselle (South Africa)

SIDE A: A SUMMER DAY by Kin Fai Wan (Taiwan)

SWIM HARD by Mark Penwill (South Africa, United Kingdom)

THE HOUSE THAT NEVER SLEEPS by Sean Mongie (South Africa)

THE TRUCK by Elizabeth Rao (United States)

UNDERCURRENT by Luca Smith (South Africa)

UNSAVABLE by Javier Marco (Spain)

VOX HUMANA by Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan (Philippines)

WE DID NOT CONSENT by Dorothy Allen-Pickard (United Kingdom)

Lee Chang-dong stands out as a pivotal figure in Korean cinema as he brings a rare depth to storytelling, blending poetic visuals with an unflinching look at the human condition. Not just entertainment, his films are meditations on life’s messiness, often leaving audiences wrestling with complex questions rather than handing out easy answers. While he has written and directed just six features in over two decades the calibre of his work has placed him among the most admired auteurs in film. A celebrated literary figure in South Korea whose fiction earned him accolades well before his foray into cinema, Lee writes and directs harrowing tales that place his characters in extreme psychological and physical agony to test the limits of the human spirit. His tightly structured plotlines deliver unflinching exposés of pain, trauma, and rage. He appears to follow conventional genre tropes, from melodrama to noir and gangster flicks, only to subvert audience expectations with exceptionally complex stories that leave them to contemplate perplexing existential, spiritual, and moral questions. A writer turned director whose literary background lends his films their novelistic weight, he has made some of the most searching and emotionally devastating works in contemporary cinema.

Lee was born in Daegu in 1954 to a leftist family. He hoped to become a painter at an early age but made a name for himself in the theatre and literary worlds. He started filmmaking at nearly 40, initially working as a screenwriter and assistant director for Park Kwang-su, an influential figure in the Korean New Wave of the late 1980s and 1990s. Between making Oasis (2002) and Secret Sunshine (2007), from 2003 to 2004, Lee served as South Korea’s Minister of Culture and Tourism.

Suffused with all the beauty, pain, and tension of real life, his films look closely at ordinary people pushed to emotional extremes as they grapple with tragedy and trauma: In Burning (2018), a slow-burn mystery about class, jealousy, and existential drift, adapted from a Haruki Murakami story, Lee transforms a slim narrative into a haunting, ambiguous masterpiece that has earned him critical acclaim and a Palme d’Or nomination at Cannes Film Festival.

Poetry (2010) focuses on an elderly woman who confronts her grandchild’s utter indifference to morality while facing Alzheimer’s. Tender yet brutal, it won Best Screenplay at Cannes, lauded for its deep emotional and intellectual impact.

His earlier work, Peppermint Candy (1999), rewinds a man’s life to unpack South Korea’s turbulent history, enhancing his reputation for weaving personal stories with societal scars. In Secret Sunshine (2007) he weaves the quiet desperation of a single mother as she endures a cascade of tragedies. Through these profoundly human characters, Lee contemplates the greatest question of all: what is the meaning of life in an often-senseless world? His restraint is one of his hallmarks. He does not rely on melodrama or flashy action—common in some Korean hits—but trusts quiet moments and subtle performances to carry the weight. Actors like Yoon Jeong-hee in Poetry or Yoo Ah-in Burning shine under his direction, delivering raw, lived-in portrayals. Jeon Do-yeon won Best Actress at Cannes for Secret Sunshine, while Moon So-ri received the Marcello Mastroianni Award at Venice for her breakout role in Oasis, further testament to the power of Lee’s human-focused storytelling.

The retrospective is made possible with the support of the Korean Cultural Centre in South Africa (KCCSA), which has played a key role in showcasing the richness and diversity of Korean culture to South African audiences. From film, art, and food to language, fashion, beauty, sports, and the global phenomenon of K-pop and K-dramas, the Centre has introduced a vibrant spectrum of Korean content to South Africa. Through collaborative projects and cultural initiatives, KCCSA is committed to foster deeper mutual understanding and strengthen enduring ties between South Korea and South Africa. To learn more about the Centre’s programmes and initiatives, visit their website (https://sa.korean-culture.org/en) or follow their social media pages.

Audiences will be able to enjoy five of Lee Chang-dong’s films –

PEPPERMINT CANDY – 19 Jul 19:00 Gateway 9
BURNING – 20 Jul 16:30 Gateway 9
POETRY – 20 Jul 18:30 Pavilion 12
SECRET SUNSHINE – 22 Jul 18:30 Gateway 8
OASIS – 23 Jul 18:30 Gateway 8

Festival Passes, bundles of 6 or 8 tickets so each ticket is 50% off the normal festival price, are now available at Webtickets. Offer valid until 4 July 2025.

Single tickets, at the normal festival price of R80, will be available for purchase from 10 June 2025 though each cinema.