Milisuthando

Saw this at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

"Milisuthando" is a documentary about a story set in past, present, and future South Africa. An invitation into a poetic, memory-driven exploration of love, intimacy, race, and belonging by the filmmaker, who grew up during apartheid but didn't know it was happening until it was over. With the main focus being on director Milisuthando Bongela, Bongela does a pretty good job and narrating about her experience as an African individual, experiences of love, belonging, race, and change.

Throughout the film, there are extremely beautiful camerawork, touching archival footage and interesting narrations provided from Bongela as she remains to be an interesting character study to observe. You get to understand the person she is and why she has become the person she is now from these presentations and how other events are related to her. Beautiful soundtrack and design are implemented as well

The biggest issue is that the film does get a little lost halfway as some of the scenes discussed could have been trimmed or removed. But overall, I enjoyed this documentary and the Q&A session afterwards brought up a lot of interesting points.

Rating: B+