Canadian Premiere
In Let Them Be Seen, South African filmmaker Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi returns to her home of Tapoleng — a small town in South Africa’s Eastern Cape where churches once gave residents sanctuary under apartheid. Mkulisi has come back to see what has taken root since that era, finding the region still marked by missionary influence. However, this film is not about the church as an institution; instead, it’s about the ability of a community to remake faith when old systems no longer hold.
Shot with phones, digital video, and DSLRs, Mkulisi’s feature debut moves according to its own strange rhythm, passing through spaza shops, homes, fields, Rastafarian conversations, and a Jam Alley reenactment that feels like a dream remembered in public. The film does not explain Tapoleng from the outside — it lets the town speak through ritual, humour, and everyday life. World premiering in IFFR’s Bright Future section before screening at the BlackStar Film Festival, Let Them Be Seen is an absurdist village portrait about being seen on your own terms.
Content Considerations: Racism, flashing/strobing lights
Best Documentary, Joburg 2026
Fresh Daabuza, Sindiswa Ngendane, Lieketseng Martins, Keneiloe Molale, Thandeka Singiselo, Magaret Ngendane
South Africa/Germany
2026
In English, Xhosa, and Southern Sotho with English subtitles
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits & Director
Producer
Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi, Shveta Naidoo, Evan Wigdorowitz, Julie Nxadi, Blair Smith
Cinematography
Siyasanga Gibson, Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi
Editor
Sabrina Rücker
Original Music
Gugulethu Duma
Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi
Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi is a South African filmmaker based in Berlin who works in both fiction and documentary forms. Her films explore sociological and psychological behaviour through formal constraints, objects, and environments, moving between realism and abstraction. Her feature Let Them Be Seen (2026) premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam and won Best Documentary at the Joburg Film Festival. Mkulisi is an alumna of Berlinale Talents and the Locarno Residency, and received the Hubert Bals Fund for her debut fiction feature, which is currently in development.
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Let Them Be Seen
Let Them Be Seen is an absurdist portrait of the town of Tapoleng in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, moving through churches, spaza shops, and a Jam Alley re-enactment to document a village reshaping faith and community in post-apartheid life.
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Image: © Mirabel Pictures
