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.
