Africa Is a Country

Windhoek characters

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Windhoek characters

By
Netta Kornberg

Netta Kornberg watch film trailers so you don't have to: This time, Namibian short films are the focus of her #TrailerTakedown.

Photo: Peinge Nakale.

The Namibian film industry is a busy one, often occupied with producing nature documentaries for the likes of National Geographic and Blue Planet, German TV films, NGO information films on subjects like education and HIV, and commercials. In recent years, however, there has been an upsurge of short films by Namibian filmmakers due in part to increased funding by the Namibian Film Commission. On Thursday December 12 in London, AfricaAvenir and Friends of Namibia screened four of these films. Because they are difficult to access, those of us who couldn’t be there have only got the trailers. Here is the trailer takedown of the films that were shown, plus a new short film in full.

My Beautiful Nightmare

The summary gives us this scant information: “A young woman bruised by the city, dreams of escape and the freedom of her childhood.” The trailer certainly gives us some snapshots that manage to convey a sense of urban delirium. The nightmare comes across, though it’s less clear where the beautiful comes in. Perhaps in the film’s sound, which in the trailer is striking.

Dead River

This is the only film on the roster set during Namibia’s past and appears to do so through the forbidden relationship (initially friendship; possibly romantic later on) between a white girl and black boy. It also looks to be the only one set on a farm rather than in a city. There is a lot of silence around Namibia’s apartheid history, and it is not often common knowledge that Namibia was ever under South Africa’s apartheid rule. While I doubt it’s a subtle story, there is a lot of potential for a film which takes common themes, like forbidden love and family loyalties, into new contexts.

Try

Money, sex, violence. If that didn’t push it home, the music should tell you this looks to be chock-full of drama. Add in some universal themes of “love, friendship, family, loyalty, revenge and the serendipity of life” (as the summary tells it) on top of the ensemble cast and I’m guessing we’ve got a narrative that covers a lot of stylized ground about Windhoek life.

100 Bucks

Seeing ‘100 Bucks’ and ‘Try’ side by side would be interesting, as they seem to have a lot in common, weaving together the stories of multiple disparate characters in Windhoek. The ‘100 Bucks’ trailer has a lot of indoor shots and might take us away from the streetscapes that dominate the ‘Try’ trailer. More than anything, this trailer is seductive like a prototypical first date: low lighting, music crooning, lots of meaningful looks and not too much talking. I like it.

For those of us that missed these films, here’s ‘Everything Happens for a Reason’, found entirely on YouTube. This 14-minute Namibian short film was done as one long take. According to the director, they had one day to shoot and finally got it right as the sun was going down, giving it particular lighting to great effect. It also features really good opening lines:

Further Reading

After the uprising

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In search of Saadia

Who was Saadia, and why has she been forgotten? A search for one woman’s story opens up bigger questions about race, migration, belonging, and the gaps history leaves behind.

Binti, revisited

More than two decades after its release, Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates—offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.

The bones beneath our feet

A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains—and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.

What comes after liberation?

In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.

The cost of care

In Africa’s migration economy, women’s labor fuels households abroad while their own needs are sidelined at home. What does freedom look like when care itself becomes a form of exile?

The memory keepers

A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.

Making films against amnesia

The director of the Oscar-nominated film ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.