In anticipation of the moving image exhibition Turning Towards the Sun, hosted in collaboration with the African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC) and BMW, Zeitz MOCAA presents the Pan-African Film Caravan.
The programme highlights a range of historical and contemporary African cinematic approaches, from historical drama, new wave to surrealism, science fiction, and docu-fiction. The selection of films feature everyday narratives of queer African life, the human condition, and cultural reclamation. Turning Towards the Sun: Pan-African Film Caravan foregrounds voices from Africa and its diaspora, moving from a singular perspective to a multivocal one. In honouring the Pan-African tradition, the programme invites a wider Cape Town audience to experience films that build on the continent’s cinematic canon.
The next film in the Pan-African Film Caravan screening programme is titled Difret (2014), directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari. Rather than approaching its subject through spectacle, Difret unfolds as a restrained and deeply affecting meditation on the relationship between law, custom, and the lived realities of young women in Ethiopia. Based on the true story of Hirut Assefa, a 14-year-old schoolgirl who kills her abductor while resisting the customary practice of marriage by kidnapping, the film traces the legal battle that follows as she faces prosecution for murder. At its centre is the intervention of lawyer Meaza Ashenafi, whose defence of Hirut becomes not only an argument for justice in an individual case, but a broader challenge to the social and legal structures that sustain gendered violence.
Mehari resists the conventions of the courtroom drama, favouring quiet observation over melodrama. The film’s measured pacing and understated visual language foreground the emotional and political weight of everyday acts of resistance, allowing its critique of patriarchal tradition to emerge with clarity rather than rhetorical excess. In doing so, Difret situates personal testimony within a wider conversation about institutional reform, demonstrating how legal advocacy can become a site through which social transformation is imagined and enacted. It is a film that understands justice not as an abstract ideal, but as something negotiated through courage, solidarity, and an unwavering commitment to dignity.
Screenings take place at the Labia Theatre every last Friday of the month from 6 pm–8 pm, May though November 2026. A communal conversation follows each screening led by the Zeitz MOCAA curatorial team. Screenings cost a nominal fee of R30 to be donated to the BMW Centre for Art Education, enabling children from under-resourced communities to access and participate in our holiday and community programmes, tours, and workshops
WHAT: Difret (2014), directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari
WHERE: The Labia Theatre, Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town 8001
WHEN: Friday, 28 August 2026 | 6 pm–8 pm
BOOKING: Webtickets | Non-members pay R30 per person | Zeitz MOCAA Members enter free with presentation of valid membership.
Not yet a member? Reach out to our friendly team at the front desk or E membership@zeitzmocaa.museum to explore Zeitz MOCAA Membership
INFO: VISIT | The Labia Theatre T 021 424 5927 VISIT
PHOTO: Image still from Difret (2014), courtesy of Zeresenay Berhane Mehari.
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