Let Them Be Seen Spectrum
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About
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
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
