As climate induced disasters are on the rise across Southern Africa, three activists grapple with what thinking globally and acting locally means in practise. Gabriel Klaasen is leading the charge against coal generated energy in South Africa, where more carbon dioxide is emitted per capita than any other country on Earth. With rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels, the stakes are high, not only for the world but also for the millions who live in close proximity to poisonous gases. In Namibia, Ina-Maria Shikongo is working under tough conditions to stop Canadian company, Recon Africa, from fracking for gas in the Okavango Delta. Recon is threatening food security for the country and its neighbours, not to mention the immense beauty of the delta and its pristine water which has birthed a unique bio-diverse region. When his hometown, Durban, is devastated by flooding, Kumi Naidoo is stunned by government inaction. He’s clear that people must prepare for what is coming and to organise themselves accordingly. But how do we grow a powerful movement when so few people see climate as the big issue? Taking place between two major climate conferences – COP26 Glasgow and COP27 Sharm el-Sheikh, Temperature Rising uncovers the barriers to climate action and calls loudly for movement building from below, at a time where the very survival of large numbers of people depends on what activists can get political leaders to do.

When a potentially devastating new virus emerges in early 2020, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Rehad Desai is already following a vaccine clinical trial that could finally end the decades-long HIV pandemic. Widening his lens to trace this “tale of two pandemics,” Rehad confronts the harsh reality that, while antiviral drugs are vital, eliminating the accelerating threat to humanity from emerging diseases requires making those drugs available to all, while also tackling the poverty, malnutrition and lack of access to healthcare that are fuelling the rise of dangerous new pathogens — and the clock is ticking.

How to Steal a Country is the story of the Gupta family’s spectacular rise from flea market shoe salesmen to establishing a massive black owned business empire in South Africa. It runs as a suspenseful detective story uncovering one huge bribery scandal after another, involving the top echelons of political power and several well-known multinational corporations.

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. The police insisted that they shot in self- defense. Miners Shot Down tells a different story, one that unfolds in real time over seven days, like a ticking time bomb. The film weaves together the central point-of-view of three strike leaders, Mambush, Tholakele and Mzoxolo, with compelling police footage, TV archive and interviews with lawyers representing the miners in the ensuing commission of inquiry into the massacre. What emerges is a tragedy that arises out of the deep fault lines in South Africa’s nascent democracy, of enduring poverty and a twenty year old, unfulfilled promise of a better life for all. A campaigning film, beautifully shot, sensitively told, with a haunting soundtrack, Miners Shot Down reveals how far the African National Congress has strayed from its progressive liberationist roots and leaves audiences with an uncomfortable view of those that profit from minerals in the global South.

The Battle for Johannesburg captures the changing face of a city that’s preparing to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It’s a tale of property developers vying for sections of the crumbling city with renewed excitement, of a city council determined to create a world-class city and ultimately of how this affects the hundreds of thousands of people who have made the city slums their home. There is money to be spent, even more, to be made and conflicting interests are at stake. As whole areas around stadiums get a brush-up and the middle classes, black and white, begin to move back in, beneath the scramble for property and space is a human story of survival. The eyes of the world are on South Africa. The film raises universal questions such as does urban development have to mean gentrification and is it possible to create a world-class city for all?

In 1906, to raise revenue, the Natal Colony introduces a new tax on the head of every man over the age of 18. Young chief Bhambatha leads a brave fight against the tax that not only unites many Africans but for the first time sees guerilla tactics used against the enemy on the continent. This film explores the conditions that gave Bhambatha and his supporters no option but to make a stand, and the brutal response by the colony to wrest power away from African chiefs.

Cass Collier and Ian Armstrong push the limits in Cape Town’s big waves and go on to claim competitive victory. But it was Cass’ father, Ahmed, who resisted apartheid restrictions and coached his son to become a champion. Today Cass echoes his father’s earlier efforts, as he and Ian teach a new generation of children to surf. But they find that reversing the effects of the past is not easy.

Filmmaker Rehad Desai takes us on an intimate journey mapped out by the scars etched into his family’s life from having a family who were intensely involved in politics. Barney Desai was a political hero during South Africa’s struggle for freedom, yet as a father, he was damagingly absent emotionally. Rehad spent most of his young life in exile and became politically active himself. On this intensely personal journey into his past, Rehad realises he may be following in his father’s footsteps as he reviews his relationship with his own estranged teenage son.

An unflinching look at the #FeesMustFall student movement that burst onto the South African political landscape in 2015 as a protest over the cost of education, and morphed into the most militant national revolt since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. The story is told by four student leaders at Wits University and their Vice Chancellor, Adam Habib, a left-wing, former anti-apartheid student activist. When Habib’s efforts to contain the protest fail, he brings 1000 police on to campus. There are dire consequences for the young leaders: Mcebo Dlamini is arrested and charged with serious offences, Shaeera Kalla is shot 13 times with rubber-coated bullets; others, fearing the involvement of the state security agencies, are forced into hiding. At the heart of the film sits an intergenerational conflict connecting us to an important contemporary discourse on the conceptualisation of higher education as a public good. To date, there have been unprecedented numbers involved, three deaths and 800 arrests. By blending dramatic unfolding action with a multi-protagonist narrative, much of the drama lies in the internal struggles the activists have around the weight of leadership. Threaded through the film is a pulse of anticipation, shared across the generational divide, that somehow these youth have reached breaking point and won’t back down until they achieve the kind of social transformation, that previous generations had long given up on.

The loyalty people have for the party of liberation operates at a deep psychological level. But in recent years, the ANC’s popularity is at an all-time low, not least amongst people who were once its most loyal supporters. The nation’s sense of unease is only made worse by the high profile corruption cases surrounding President Jacob Zuma and his friends, and compounded by patronage and the ANC’s unwillingness to cut him loose. Now that a new political party has entered the ring, the Economic Freedom Fighters, and the ANC finds itself challenged by the energetic young ‘Fighters’. The Giant is Falling takes a sweeping look at the big political events of recent years that signify the end of an era in South Africa. With declining popularity at the polls and the real possibility of losing the comfortable majority the party has enjoyed for two decades, the big debate in South Africa is whether or not the party can recover its reputation as the most respected liberation movement in the world? Locating the moment when things fell apart as the Marikana Massacre, the film charts the various ways people have collectively responded to the ANC’s failure to deliver on its promises. Bookmarked by the 2016 Local Elections, The Giant is Falling asks why South Africa, a middle-income country, rich in mineral wealth has failed to address inequality in twenty-two years of democracy and why the gap between rich and poor is growing. From the break with the trade unions, to the #FeesMustFall student movement, to the more recent crushing electoral losses at the polls for the ANC, this film provides an unflinching look at the festering sore of inequality that is making the current situation untenable. The question is when the status quo breaks, what will replace it?

An unflinching look at the #FeesMustFall student movement that burst onto the South African political landscape in 2015 as a protest over the cost of education, and morphed into the most militant national revolt since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. The story is told by four student leaders at Wits University and their Vice Chancellor, Adam Habib, a left-wing, former anti-apartheid student activist. When Habib’s efforts to contain the protest fail, he brings 1000 police on to campus. There are dire consequences for the young leaders: Mcebo Dlamini is arrested and charged with serious offences, Shaeera Kalla is shot 13 times with rubber-coated bullets; others, fearing the involvement of the state security agencies, are forced into hiding. At the heart of the film sits an intergenerational conflict connecting us to an important contemporary discourse on the conceptualisation of higher education as a public good. To date, there have been unprecedented numbers involved, three deaths and 800 arrests. By blending dramatic unfolding action with a multi-protagonist narrative, much of the drama lies in the internal struggles the activists have around the weight of leadership. Threaded through the film is a pulse of anticipation, shared across the generational divide, that somehow these youth have reached breaking point and won’t back down until they achieve the kind of social transformation, that previous generations had long given up on.

Southern Africa’s plant and animal life has a global significance second only to the Amazon Rainforest. Locked within the region is a vast medicine cabinet of untapped resources. This has not gone unnoticed by the pharmaceutical giants whose bio-prospecting has led them into conflict with Southern Africa’s indigenous people, the San. We tell the story of the rabid hunt for new drugs, the vast profits to be made and the marginalized traditional healers of the region in their last stand to heal the world before it destroys them and their practices forever.