Loving Thokoza (2020)

Lockdown’s award-winning creator Mandla N makes his eagerly anticipated feature film debut with Loving Thokoza, set in the chaotic months leading up to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994.  

Enhle Mbali Mlotshwa (Isidingo, uHambo) stars as Charlotte Grootboom, a recently graduated English teacher who comes to Johannesburg to stay with her uncle (SAFTA winner Hamilton Dlamini from Isithembiso and Five Fingers For Marseilles), while she looks for a job at a Model C school. Unable to find work, she instead takes a teaching job at an apartheid-ravaged school in Thokoza, where she fights to set up a debating society. 

Loving Thokoza is also a love story set in a time of uncertainty, as Charlotte falls for ex-APLA comrade Moscow (SAFTA winner Mduduzi Mabaso from Rhythm City), who is struggling to find his place in this unstable new South Africa. 

Loving Thokoza was shot in just nine days with all new heads of department promoted from within Black Brain Pictures.