LFF 2026: Let Them Be Seen (Nolitha R. Mkulisi, 2026)

The Xhosa‑speaking Eastern Cape of South Africa carries a distinctive rhythm shaped by its landscapes, languages, and long political memory.  Rolling hills give way to villages where isiXhosa is not just spoken but lived—woven into poetry, communal rituals, and everyday negotiations of identity.  It's a region marked by resilience: the birthplace of towering political figures, the site of fierce anti‑colonial resistance, and a place where traditions like cattle‑keeping still anchor community life.  Yet the province is also defined by movement, with many residents navigating the pull between rural homesteads and urban opportunity.

What emerges is a region that feels both rooted and restless, carrying forward a cultural confidence that continues to shape South Africa’s broader story.  Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi's feature debut Let Them Be Seen, which played earlier this year at International Film Festival Rotterdam and screens at the BFI London Film Festival today and tomorrow, is a slippery experimental documentary set in Tapoleng, the Eastern Cape village where the director grew up.  As with fellow LFF 2026 title At Night, Let Them Be Seen finds itself in the Dare strand when it would be rather less surprising to see it housed in the Experimenta section.

Tapoleng is situated near the town of Sterkspruit and close to the Lesotho border, and, like many villages in the region, is characterised by its prevalence of churches—a result of Dutch Reformed Church missionaries greatly expanding their activities in the Eastern Cape from the mid-19th century onwards.  Mkulisi includes frequent shots of these edifices as she essays daily life in Tapoleng, whose residents now look beyond the church buildings that once provided sanctuary as apartheid raged on.  The film also casts its gaze on the village's large cattle population, some of whom return this interest with an inquisitive bovine stare.

Besides these recurring shots of cows and churches, Mkulisi employs a more obscure leitmotif in the form of SABC music show Jam Alley, which is celebrated by a group of brightly wigged women as they endeavour to re-enact moments from the programme.  Mkulisi uses a mind-boggling variety of formats as she captures the essence of this largely forgotten community, for whom the spaza shop serves as a social hub; the countless small interruptions endured by the store's owner as he explains Rastafarianism are almost a running gag in this singular hybrid documentary, which is at once fluid and discordant.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

LFF 2026: The Day I Became a Bird (Rob Madden, 2026)

The 2023 short film The Day I Became a Bird distils Oscar-winning filmmaker Andrew Ruhemann's gift for delicate, emotionally resonant storytelling into a brief but luminous coming‑of‑age tale.  The film follows Frank, a boy who becomes so overwhelmed by his bird-obsessed first crush that he painstakingly constructs an avian-inspired costume, wearing it to school as his feelings outgrow the limits of his small world.  Ruhemann treats this metamorphosis not as fantasy spectacle but as a metaphor for the strangeness of early longing—that sudden sense of becoming other, becoming noticeable, becoming vulnerable.

With its soft visual palette and gentle pacing, the tender film captures the awkward poetry of childhood desire, offering a story that feels both whimsically surreal and quietly, universally true.  The short was made using the Unity engine, and after its release it emerged that Ruhemann's company, Passion Pictures, was working with Dundee indie studio Hyper Luminal on a videogame adaptation of the film.  The finished work is one of five titles featured in the BFI London Film Festival's Games Lounge, which forms part of LFF Expanded and is located in the BFI IMAX, where it is available for the festival's duration.

The four‑chapter game is available on Steam, PlayStation and Nintendo, and I played the Steam version.  I did encounter one notable bug, which caused the game to crash repeatedly at a point where the player is prompted to flip over a school chalkboard.  In the end, the workaround involved temporarily turning the master audio volume all the way down, after which the chapter played out smoothly.  Other than this, there were no performance issues of note.  As the game—like the film—is primarily aimed at younger children, the controls are nice and simple, and can be further streamlined via the menu's accessibility options.

The game sticks closely to both the film's story and its hand‑drawn art style, as Frank undertakes his quest to catch the eye of Sylvia, his dream girl.  As such, it carries the same effortless charm as its source material (which in turn was based on the eponymous book), and its gentle challenges make for a pleasant and relaxing couple of hours.  While you could barrel through the game in under an hour, that approach seems contrary to its mellow sensibilities, which extend to omitting the film's scenes of Frank being picked on by his unthinking classmates.  For such a short game, the RRP is a little steep—although the Steam version includes a download of the film—but it's a title worth picking up at a reduced price.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

LFF 2026: Filipiñana (Rafael Manuel, 2026)

Colonial rule in the Philippines unfolded as a long, layered encounter that reshaped the archipelago's political and cultural landscape.  Spanish authority, beginning in the 16th century, brought Catholicism, new administrative structures, and a rigid social hierarchy that often clashed with deeply rooted local traditions.  Towns grew around churches and plazas, while tribute systems and forced labour pulled communities into the orbit of imperial demands.  Yet Filipinos continually negotiated, resisted, and adapted—preserving indigenous languages, asserting regional identities, and nurturing nationalist thought.

By the time American rule followed in 1898, the islands had already set the stage for modern struggles over sovereignty and cultural self‑definition.  Dutch co-production Filipiñana—which has the last of its four screenings at Film Fest Gent today before playing at the BFI London Film Festival on Saturday and Sunday—is a film in which the weight of Filipino history is almost palpable.  Rafael Manuel's feature debut is based on his eponymous short film from 2020; both films star Jorrybell Agoto as Isabel, a young woman working at an exclusive Manila country club, where she places golf balls on tees at the driving range.

In another sop to the egos of the course's wealthy patrons—none of whom are professional golfers—an all-female team of caddies are on hand.  While there is a drought in Metro Manila—and the country club workers are toiling away in sweltering temperatures—both the golf course and its clientele enjoy a seemingly endless supply of cool, refreshing water.  Isabel becomes intrigued by the club's reptilian president, Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman), who accidentally leaves behind a golf iron that Isabel is tasked with returning, triggering a tense walk through areas of the complex that are normally off-limits to golf course employees.

Manuel's film appears to be a formalist exercise, one whose immaculately-composed shots and sly digs at the class system are undermined by problematic pacing; the knowledge that the film's genesis lies in a 24-minute short is apt to fuel the opinion that the material has been laboriously stretched to feature length.  Dubious editing choices aside, there's much to admire about Filipiñana: Agoto makes for a suitably engaging lead, 100 Nights of Hero DoP Xenia Patricia's lensing is astonishing, and Manuel's adroitness in making the golf course a microcosm of Filipino society—both past and present—betrays his relative inexperience.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI / Film Fest Gent