The South African Village That Refused to Be Explained
Who gets to construct the image of a place? A South African documentary brings that question to Vancouver.
A place on its own terms
Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi returns to her home town of Tapoleng in Let Them Be Seen, a feature debut assembled from phone footage, digital video and DSLR images. VIFF describes a film that lets everyday encounters carry the portrait: homes and fields, spaza shops, conversations and play. The Eastern Cape community’s religious life holds both a missionary inheritance and memories of sanctuary under apartheid.
After Rotterdam’s Bright Future programme and BlackStar, the film won Best Documentary at Joburg 2026. Its Canadian premiere arrives in Vancouver on October 8.
Southwood perspective
A camera does more than record a place. It decides where the edges are, whose voice carries and what an audience is asked to understand. That is the question drawing Southwood to this film.
The promise in VIFF’s description is room for people to be more than evidence for somebody else’s argument. Humour can sit beside history; an ordinary exchange need not become a lesson for an outsider. A place can remain complicated even after we have looked closely.
For a publication interested in South Africa and visual culture, that is a reason to go into the cinema curious. This is a preview, and the question we will bring to the screening is simple: what changes when the people in an image help determine its terms?
See it in Vancouver
Thursday, October 8 · 7:15 pm
International Village 8
Friday, October 9 · 11:30 am
VIFF Centre — VIFF Cinema
All times Vancouver local time. 74 minutes. English, Xhosa and Southern Sotho, with English subtitles.