Two acclaimed South African films will bookend the return of the Joburg Film Festival from 3-8 March 2026, opening and closing the city’s premier cinematic event with stories firmly rooted in local history, myth and memory.
The festival is inaugurated on March 3 Laundry (Uhlanjulu)Zamo Mkhwanazi's debut feature film, fresh from its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was praised as “exciting African cinema” by Film Fatale. described by Diversity With “the flare of 1990s historical dramas”, the film is set in 1960s South Africa and focuses on a black family that runs a laundry business under rare permission in a whites-only district.
At its center is Enoch, played by Siyabonga Shibe, a patriarch fighting to protect his family's fragile livelihood in a system designed to exclude him. Their son, played by Ntobeko Sishi, has artistic ambitions that complicate the family's already precarious situation. As the threat of imprisonment looms, the story shifts to a focus on survival, dignity and the quiet theft of inter-generational wealth under apartheid. The cast also includes Bukamina Sebakhulu, Tracy September and Justine Strydom. While opening night attendance is by invitation, the film will be screened again to the public on March 7 at the new Metro Cine 1 in Hyde Park.
The festival will conclude with the South African premiere on 8 March trekA western-horror written by first-time director Miikei Adam. Set in 1846, the film tells the story of a Dutch-African family and their British protectors who, guided by a mysterious Khoen traveller, travel across the Kalahari Desert to claim the land. As hunger, exhaustion, and disbelief fragment the group, two spectral figures taken from Southern African folklore hover at the edges of the story.
“Land is not just a backdrop,” says Nhlanhla Ndaba, curator of the Joburg Film Festival. trek. “It's alive. It's evaluating them.”
Blending historical realism with mythological storytelling, the film reimagines the Western survival genre through a distinctly Southern African lens. It interrogates colonialism not as distant history but as an ongoing moral and spiritual reckoning, a topic that feels especially urgent at this time. The cast includes Morne Visser, Maurice Carped, Camilla Borgesani, Trixie Vivier and Rob van Vuuren, with Adam having already received recognition from the Directors Guild of South Africa's Creative Awards. For Ndaba, the pairing of these two films is intentional.
“Both laundry And trek “Delicately balance texture with technique and navigate your subject with real confidence,” he says. These are stories rooted in uniquely South African contexts that invite audiences to think, feel and actively journey with the characters.''