MILISUTHANDO is an experimental personal essay documentary by Milisuthando Bongela about her reckoning with apartheid in South Africa during her childhood. Some very bold & admirable choices here with lots of ambition & thematic power but it didn’t all fully come together for me.

I couldn’t stop crying. How do we act on our autonomy knowing we are products of history? How do we reckon with that generational trauma of our ancestors?

I can’t stop thinking about that boy, smiling through his tears, while contemplating on the fact that there are people in this world he does not know who hate him simply because he exists.

This is not a film. But this is everything that films should strive to be.

such a powerful manipulation of the idiosyncratic qualities of the audiovisual to talk about ugly messy huge things. fiction and nonfiction, poetry and silence, archives and memory.

Archival footage is expertly edited into a quilt of meaning and truth. Ignore the headlines on CNN and watch this instead.

Absolutely captivating for the first 80 minutes. I don’t understand 30 minutes of audio only interviews to finish it off?? I’m just reading the screen.

I have never been so mad at an artistic choice than the last hour of this film

stunning entry in the documentary as personal essay subgenre

The first two thirds of this film are excellent, but this film lost its momentum in the last third, mostly due to the use of blank black screens with dialogue spoken over that. In the Q&A, I heard what the director was going for with that choice, but I still felt distanced from the film and its flow after that technique was used. 

The focus of this film is a fascinating moment in history. I would like to see more films like this that explore events that have been mostly forgotten by modern audiences.

An initially intriguing glimpse into the Transkei bantustan that unfortunately devolves into sheer self-indulgence. A lesson learnt - avoid films named after their director.

Also sets the record for most walkouts I've ever witnessed in a cinema, with a third of the audience leaving in the first half hour

Not gonna pretend I have any thoughts on this that aren't informed by my unfortunate ignorance about South African apartheid. I wasn't particularly engaged and was quite bored throughout, but that was less the movie's fault and more its refusal to hold my hand through its complex histories. I can imagine that if I knew more this would be an incredibly moving film. That being said, I really was engaged by her conversations with her white friends about what whiteness means and how it affects them and how they act. One of the few times the film felt completely relevant to my context in a way that was immediately applicable.

(Also, on a less serious note, if I ever arrive late to a film and immediately take out my phone at full brightness and start texting someone, shoot me on the spot. It's too late for me. What was that person in front of me THINKING???)

the theme of ‘unexplainable’ feelings and existential unease in this documentary is both unsettling and validating, a reminder that both ‘not born free’ & ‘born free’ south africans are still trying to articulate today. there’s  something so raw and tender in how this piece captures the semiotics of memory, class, race, and identity, revealing the delicate, and often unspoken experiences that shape south african girlhood. it breathes life into memories & experiences that go unseen, making space for them to be felt, honoured, and understood.

Milisuthando is like biblical to me now. i need to watch this and savour it again & again & again & again & again & again & again & again & again & again