South African Films Ranked

Six days in the violent life of a young Johannesburg gang leader.

Drafted into the South African army during apartheid, a young soldier joins the military's travelling choir, and romance on the battlefield causes him to deal with his long-repressed sexual identity.

After a plane crash a young boy and his dog wander through the Kalahari desert.

A version of Georges Bizet's Carmen, set in a modern-day South African township.

Hilarious documentary on the wildlife of the Namib Desert.

A film about an African tribesman seeking revenge against the people who murdered his daughter. His crusade leads him to commit murder himself, and to trial before a court.

A comic allegory about a traveling Bushman who encounters modern civilization and its stranger aspects, including a clumsy scientist and a band of revolutionaries.

Xolani, a lonely factory worker, travels to the rural mountains with the men of his community to initiate a group of teenage boys into manhood.

In 2002, Johannes Kerkorrel, lead singer of the Gereformeerde Blues Band, has just committed suicide, and a group of friends gathers to celebrate his life and the end of an era. Flashbacks and voiceovers recreate the rise of the Voëlvry movement and the rebellion of young Afrikaans students in the buildup to the fall of the National Party and share the friends' confusion of being young and finding their places in the world.

In a future Earth in which aliens are isolated in a remote ghetto, a government agent finds himself banished there.

Based on Elsa Joubert's novel "The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena," regarded as one of the best African novels of the 20th century.

An actor secretly moonlighting at a failing drag club has to fight for his marriage after being caught red-handed by his wife, as well as deliver the performance of his life to avert suspicion regarding the mysterious death of a colleague.

A modern adaption of Anton Chekhov's THE SEAGULL: a famous actress pays summer visits to her brother and her son on their country estate, and one year she brings along her lover, a successful writer. This leads to familial conflict, heartbreak, and tragedy.

An aging matriarch aims to bring together her fractured, dysfunctional family over Eid-al-Fitr to break the news about her new romance.

A young hoodlum's rise from a small-time criminal to a powerful crime entrepreneur during the turbulent years before and after the fall of apartheid.

Cassim is a young Muslim man who works in his father's fabric shop in Johannesburg. However, Cassim wants to be a stand-up comedian, which his father disproves of. When he gets a gig at a local bar, he has to find a way of keeping it a secret.

When the chips are down and everything seems lost, it's good to have a best friend.

A film based on the true life story of a young man who becomes a storyteller in jail.

Having inherited the title of Lord from one of his forefathers, Oom Piet is keen to give it up as it will hamper his chances of winning an election. But only his opponent, Sir David, can remove the title.

After a young doctor arrives in a small town, he learns that no-one living there ever gets sick. Soon after announcing free consultations, though, the whole town is sick in bed and the hotel is converted into a hospital.

A vivid color portrait of the contrast between white South Africans who enjoy one of the world's highest living standards and Black South Africans, almost all of whom are deprived of the most basic human rights.

A young man in 1981 South Africa must complete his brutal and racist two years of compulsory military service while desperately maintaining the secrecy of his homosexuality.

A Committee struggles to reach consensus regarding their candidate as more personal details are revealed about him.

In a racially-charged and violent 1950's rural South Africa, a liberal journalist recounts the epic chase, edge-of-your-seat capture and intriguing trial of a flamboyant, native "Robin Hood". His captivating re-imagining, paints a portrait of a divisive outlaw - hunted by the government, elusive even to his loved ones, all whilst remaining a champion of the disenchanted.

The film is a comedy about a shy farmer named Hans Botha who is asked to pick up a young school teacher named Martie du Toit. When Hans arrives at the bus stop to pick up Martie he is completely dumbstruck by her beauty and only able to say the phrases, "It looks like rain." and "It was an accident." The two experience many difficulties along the way, mostly due to Hans' ancient car.