SOUTH AFRICAN CINEMA10 JUL 2026The pan-African story of South African cinemaJoburg Film Festival curator Nhlanhla Ndaba delves into the profound pan-African influences that have shaped South…Kibo Ngowi7 min read

Joburg Film Festival curator Nhlanhla Ndaba shares insight on the continental ties that shaped SA film and why, in a moment of renewed xenophobic violence, they matter more than ever before When I ask Nhlanhla Ndaba what South African cinema owes to the rest of the continent, he doesn’t reach for a recent example. He goes back to exile. Ndaba has spent more than two decades in the South African film industry, almost always from behind the scenes rather than in front of them.

He started as a production runner in 2003, working his way up through festival management at Out in Africa, Encounters and the Tri Continental Film Festival. Along the way he’s produced shows for the SABC and eTV, worked as an impact assistant producer on the Emmy-winning Miners Shot Down, sat as a juror at the Berlinale International Film Festival and spent two years on Netflix’s local production slate. He returned to the Joburg Film Festival in 2022 as its curator, a role he had been building towards since serving as the festival’s programme manager in 2018 and 2019.

“South African cinema’s ties with the rest of the continent have been a strong, yet often overlooked, force for renewal,” he tells me. Long before 1994, the country’s liberation struggle “leaned heavily on support from other African nations—not just politically but culturally too”. Filmmakers pushed into exile carried the culture with them. Ndaba points to Lionel Ngakane, the South African actor and director who helped found Fepaci, the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers, working alongside figures like Ousmane Sembène.