Jozi Film Festival 2020: A New Country

The Bioscope Independent Cinema is proud to once again host the Jozi Film Festival.

Please note: The Jozi Film Festival 2020 screenings are happening at our NEW HOME at 44 Stanley, Johannesburg.

A New Country

Dir. Sifiso Khanyile

Documentary || 1h 0m || South Africa

Twenty five years after its birth as a democratic country, South Africa remains the most unequal society in the world. A country once considered a symbol of global progress and human possibility has become a cynical and divided nation. Protests frequently tear through the city streets and thousands do everything they can to make their disillusionment felt. The rich enjoy the best that country has to offer while the poor remain concentrated in apartheid ghettos. Gender-based violence, crime, and other social ills dominate news headlines every day and the country lives on a knife edge, poised for an inevitable collapse into chaos.

But this is not the first time South Africa has faced the threat of widespread violence, racial tension, economic inequality and social collapse. In the lead up to its proudest moment, the 1994 elections, South Africans were on the brink of civil war when, against the odds, Nelson Mandela’s ANC emerged victorious, making South Africa a political miracle, the birthplace of hope. The world applauded while South Africans celebrated.

Racial resentment, anger, inequality and bitterness made way for reconciliation around the idea of.. A New Country. South Africans today face difficult questions about what kind of society they want and must imagine new ways to get there. Every night the sun sets on a day of reckoning, and each dawn brings with it fresh evidence of a country desperate to heal, to reach for renewal, to start afresh.