18 October 2023

Boetie Boer: Inside The Mind Of A Monster

The most disturbing Showmax Original true-crime series to date, Boetie Boer: Inside The Mind Of A Monster takes us back in time to 1990: as the African National Congress is unbanned and Nelson Mandela is released after 27 years in prison, Stewart ‘Boetie Boer’ Wilken starts his killing spree in Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha. As journalist Brett Adkins says in the trailer, “When he was arrested, it sounded like something out of a movie. Suddenly, we had a serial killer.”

“Wilken was a highly unusual serial killer,” says director Jasyn Howes, who won Best SA Short Documentary at Jozi Film Festival for Dula. “Unlike most serial killers, he killed two distinct victim types: female sex workers and young boys, usually street children. He also claimed to engage in necrophilia and cannibalism with his victims.”

The five-part documentary is a co-production between Stage 5 Films and Howes’ Fifth Floor Films. It’s the third documentary, and first true-crime docuseries, from Stage 5 Films, building on the success of Unearthed, which won the Green Award at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival and the Audience Award at Encounters, and The Journeymen, which took home Best SA Documentary at Durban.

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