The Afrikaans Film Template

Feature films produced for the Afrikaans market in South Africa, have many distinctive characteristics, including that they're exclusively white.

A still from the Hollywood film, 'Out of Africa,' a colonial fantasy set mostly on a Kenyan farm.

The creatives at South African satellite TV channel Kyknet—which, more recently, also produces feature films—not only blatantly rip off American romantic comedy plotlines but inhabit a South Africa where not a single black face is to be seen. On the other hand, maybe they’re being honest.

Like for “Semi-Sweet.”

 

 

Further Reading

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.