The 14th kykNET Silwerskerm Film Festival takes place from 19 to 22 August in Camps Bay, Cape Town, bringing together one of the most diverse showcases of Afrikaans and South African cinema to date. The Silwerskerm Festival programme 2026 features 22 films in total, including four feature films, 17 short films (five of which are documentary shorts), and 18 films in competition.
While established filmmakers continue to showcase their craft, the festival also provides a vital platform for emerging voices entering the world of visual storytelling for the first time. Below is the complete guide to every film screening at Silwerskerm Film Festival 2026.
Feature Films
Silas en die Ysbeer op Tafelberg
Eight-year-old Silas lives at the foot of Table Mountain, where stories of Dreamland fuel his imagination. After the death of his grandmother, he refuses to accept her passing and journeys into Droomland to find her. But the world he remembers has changed, and a mysterious polar bear begins hunting him and his companions.
Director: Zandré Coetzer
Screenwriter: Annie Klopper
Cast: Neels Clasen Jnr, Luna Coetzer, Antoinette Kellermann, Beer Adriaanse, Neil Sandilands, Daneel van der Walt, Frieda van den Heever
Variasies op ’n tema
Set in Namaqualand, an elderly goatherd becomes entangled in a scam promising wartime reparations. As she waits for money that will never come, her 80th birthday approaches, threatening her independence. The film’s structured repetition creates a haunting portrait of waiting, memory and loss. Winner of the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Directors: Jason Jacobs, Devon Delmar
Writers: Jason Jacobs, Devon Delmar
Cast: Hettie Farmer, Magdalena Links, Gladwin van Niekirk, Regan Nontas, Albertus Smit
Landmyn
Three siblings reunite for a coastal holiday after years apart, only to have their estranged mother re-enter their lives. What follows is an emotional collapse of old roles, buried resentment and inherited trauma as the family is forced to confront the past they tried to escape.
Director: Nico Scheepers
Screenwriter: Nico Scheepers
Cast: Anna-Mart van der Merwe, Carla Smith, Ben Albertyn, Dhania Schultz, Nicole Holm, Juan-Christoff Smith
Al wat ek weet
After a tragic accident and family breakdown, 17-year-old Gabriel is relocated to Woodstock where grief, imagination and teenage life collide. As he navigates therapy, love and performance, he is forced to confront the emotions he has been running from.
Directors: Devon Delmar, Jason Jacobs
Writers: Devon Delmar, Jason Jacobs
Cast: Jonan Mouton, Zenobia Kloppers, June van Merch, Antoinette Myburgh, Gretchen Ramsden, Waldemar Schultz
Short Films – Emerging Filmmakers
Twee persent
In the quiet neighbourhood of Suville, Charlotte Grunewald lives by a strict routine in her perfectly organised house with her cat, Constantine. But when a new milkman, Ernest van den Burg, begins making inexplicable deliveries, he slowly disrupts her carefully ordered life. Soon, Charlotte is forced to confront her greatest fear: change.
Directors: Michelle le Roux, Heinrich Laubscher
Cast: Michelle le Roux, Albert Pretorius, Susanne Beyers
Change
Cape Town, 2025. When a UK-enforced cashless policy threatens to change everything, corporate executive Ruan tries to stop the inevitable. Told from the perspective of a two-rand coin, the film explores the lives of South Africans from different socioeconomic backgrounds and asks what is lost as society moves towards a cashless future.
Director: Frances Sholto-Douglas
Cast: Brendon Daniels, Laudo Liebenberg
Genoeg
Marc was cast out of his home as a teenager after revealing a truth about his sexuality that his father could not accept. Years later, he returns to find his father lost in the shifting world of Alzheimer’s, no longer recognising him and mistaking him for his other son. Marc chooses not to correct him, submitting instead to a quiet, aching process: to be seen.
Director: Roberto Kyle
Cast: Ayden Croy, Zane Meas
Short Back & Sides
Freek is a socially awkward young man who has cut himself off from the world, hiding behind cynicism and a quiet rage inherited from his emotionally unstable father. After a fallout with his best friend, he ends up in a warm, welcoming hair salon where Fernanda, a vivacious hairdresser with her own scars, draws him out of his hard shell and challenges him to see himself and others differently. When he wants to turn away again, he realises he is becoming the man he never wanted to be.
Director: Hennie van Deventer
Cast: Ruan Wessels, Heléne Lombard, Megan Vorster
Verwerking
A screenwriter struggles with a scene centred around gender-based violence. As he sits feverishly typing at his desk, the words begin to distort the reality around him. The word “Mother” on the page causes a woman to appear in the room; the word “Father,” a man to strike her. Spaces and places start collapsing into one another; light and time bend around the writer, and he finds himself confronted by a horrific moment that has haunted him for years.
Director: Peter-John Titus
Cast: Jaques de Silva, Bianca Flanders, Stian Bam
Yaadt Queen
On the Cape Flats, dreams rise from every corner to the music pulsing through the streets. Keisha lives a double life: isolated by day under her mother’s watchful eye, and a DJ and rising star by night in the electrifying underground Yaadt scene her father once ruled. But when she uncovers the truth about his death, the music becomes a reckoning, forcing Keisha and her mother to confront a past that could either break them or set them free.
Directors: Kyle Morkel, Kirsten Jaftha
Cast: Chanté Grainger, Kim Syster, Alvaune-Lee Lewis
Short Films – Established Filmmakers
As ek kon kies
During a church service, Kyleigh celebrates her engagement as an affirmation of the life she has chosen: one of faith, family and community. But when Lara, a woman she once loved, quietly enters the room, the mood of the morning shifts. As they make polite conversation the past starts pressing gently but persistently against the present, examining how one moment can shatter certainty, and whether the love you choose is the love you believe you deserve.
Directors: Kanya Viljoen, Emilie Badenhorst
Cast: Beata Bena, Anoecha Kruger, Josh Riley
Poppy oppie heuwel
When their beloved grandmother Poppy dies, siblings Laila and Josh return to the Namaqualand farm where they spent most of their lives. For Laila, it’s clear: Poppy must be buried beside her parents on the land where generations of their family once lived, but the farm has changed hands and the new owners deny permission for the burial. Laila refuses to accept this and decides to fulfil Poppy’s wish, raising the question of what it truly means to honour those we have lost and what it costs to claim a past that no longer has a place for you.
Director: Winford Collings
Cast: Lauren Joseph, Marunzo Thomas, Charlene le Roux, Maurice Carpede
Trilstraat
On their way to their car after an evening of exciting life decisions, a couple is caught off guard, and their conflicting reactions lead to disillusionments about each other. As they navigate the dark streets of Observatory, they must find not only a way home, but a way back to each other.
Director: Carla Smith
Cast: Cintaine Schutte, Ludwig Binge
Wag ’n bietjie
Lionel is a professional queuer sitter – he sits so you don’t have to: Home Affairs, the licensing office, name it and he’s there. It’s a living, if not much of a life. When a stranger hires him to wait at his dying mother’s bedside, Lionel reluctantly takes the job. Alone in her eccentric home filled with memories, he begins piecing together who this woman really was. A musician. An adventurer. Someone who actually lived. As her final hours tick away, Lionel is forced to face a question he’s been avoiding for a very long time: What exactly is he waiting for?
Director: Christian Grobbelaar
Cast: Danny Ross, Germandt Geldenhuys, Elzabé Zietsman, Alicia Van Emmenes
Documentary Short Films
Die gees agter die spiere
Die gees agter die spiere explores the work of Dr Henning Gericke – a highly influential sports psychologist for, among others, the Springbok team, yet unknown to the general public. This intimate, inspiring documentary goes beyond the match and arena. It sheds light on the personal stories, adversity, challenges and victories of some of South Africa’s world-class athletes, presenting them as symbols of hope.
Director: Pierre Malan
Cast: Dr Henning Gericke, Leon Schuster, Os du Randt, Cameron van der Burgh
Die grond onthou
Sonia Roman (77) is preparing to move to a new home in Protea Village, which represents justice for the deep pain she has carried since childhood. Sixty years and several court cases later, claimants such as Sonia, Boy and Nellie have their land back and are now moving to Bishopscourt, but must navigate a shared land claim and the high property taxes, raising the question of whether they can afford to spend their final years there.
Director: Mia Cilliers
Cast: Sonia Roman, Kevin Maxwell, Victor Josephus, Nellie Nomdo
Druk dit!
By day, Terence Opperman toils at a coal mine in Witbank. At night, he turns into “The Highlander” who gives his opponents hell at the arm-wrestling table. He knows the sweet taste of victory, but also the sharp bite of defeat. In arm-wrestling, he finds a release valve. At the table, he can take the enormous pressure on his shoulders and channel it straight through his opponent.
Directors: Juandrè de Jager, Lara Lourens
Cast: Terence Opperman, Niekie Fourie, Nanette Opperman
Pappa Kitsch
An impulsive online purchase leads Stefanus Nel to a painting and a mysterious scrapbook believed to have belonged to Vladimir Tretchikoff, whose works have sold for millions. What starts as curiosity quickly turns into an obsession. Stefanus and his anxious dachshund, Rocky, embark on an adventure that leads them from art experts and auction houses to laboratories and scientific testing.
Director: Stefanus Nel, Adam Heyns
Cast: Imre Lamprecht, Boris Gorelik, Natasha Swift
Rooi van aard
Since childhood, Niël’s red hair has been a source of embarrassment for him. So, he leaves the quiet, familiar world of L’Agulhas behind and embarks on a journey to Gauteng in search of other gingers. Along the way, he crosses paths with, among others, Anel Alexander (7de Laan, Semi-soet), Anthea Pokroy (of the I Collect Gingers photography project), entrepreneurs and an entire family of redheads. Amid laughter and discomfort, painful memories surface: from church camp bullies and a “photo day conspiracy” to all the little things that have always bothered him.
Director: Niël Coetzee
Cast: Anel Alexander, Anthea Pokroy, Maude Sandham
Independent Short Films
Bosryer
Jody, a tenacious young woman, lives and works on a horse farm in the Klein Karoo. After Dino, the handsome stable hand, teaches her to ride horses, she falls for him. Soon, Jody discovers Dino is an ex-addict, indebted to Saalie, the local kingpin who runs a drug trafficking operation. To work off his debt, Dino works as a “bosryer” (bush rider) running tik (crystal meth) on horseback by moonlight to evade the police
Director: Aadil Dhalech
Cast: Nicole Fortuin, Daniel Mpilo Richards, Sherman Pharo
Aasvoëls
In the volatile moments after a car crash, before the authorities arrive, a hot-headed yet desperate tow truck driver fiercely protects his tow. But the situation quickly spirals out of his control.
Director: Dian Weys
Cast: Edwin van der Walt, Frank Opperman, Albert Pretorius
From Dust We Spin
When a troubled young woman from the Cape Flats meets a car spinner haunted by his past, she defies her mother’s wishes and takes the wheel, entering a forbidden world of smoke, danger and screaming tires. As their lives begin to mirror, he fights to break the cycles that nearly destroyed him while she searches for a way out, discovering that salvation can be found in the most unlikely places.
Director: Julia Jansch
Cast: Logan Maart, Mark Linden, Latasha Maart
