Showmax acquires United Apart SA – Lockdown Remembered

Showmax has bought‘United Apart SA – Lockdown Remembered, the gripping documentary funded by Arena Holdings. It will be available exclusively on the subscription streaming platform from 9 September 2021.

In March 2020, with less than a handful of known infections, South Africa embarked on one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. United Apart SA – Lockdown Remembered is a deep dive into the country’s official lockdown strategy and the effect it has had on society, the economy and our most vulnerable citizens.

There’s also footage crowdsourced for the Sunday Times #UnitedApartSA campaign, which urged South Africans to show how they were getting through lockdown by submitting video clips, images, voice notes, or anything else that captured the essence of this extraordinary event.

“We are delighted to have sold United Apart to Showmax,” says Debbie McCrum, Managing Director at Arena Holdings. “It’s an informative, moving and entertaining investigation of what we went through as a nation during an extremely challenging year. With its focus on local content, Showmax is making the documentary available to South Africans in the comfort of their own home.”

How much did our lives change? Did the authorities go too far? Can a developing economy follow the lockdown models for fiscally sound countries? What fault lines did Covid-19 expose? What more could have been done to effect change while fighting a devastating pandemic? These are the questions pondered in United Apart.

Produced by multi-award-winning Ochre Moving Pictures and directed by Anton Burggraaf, United Apart features Professor Glenda Gray, president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council; clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist Professor Salim Abdool Karim; deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank Rashad Cassid; Business Day editor Lukanyo Mnyanda; Sowetan editor Nwabisa Makunga; and Sunday Times editor S’thembiso Msomi, among others.