→ guy lodge, variety magazine: ‘Milisuthando’ Review: A Child of Apartheid Reflects on a South Africa Still in Transition

“Brilliantly edited by Hankyeol Lee (who, as DP, also contributes some of the film’s most striking imagery of bleached skies and parched landscapes) to a swirling, immersive rhythm that audaciously connotes the sell of political propaganda, this formal centerpiece cues a less lyrical, more plainspoken reflection on the growing pains of post-apartheid South Africa.”

→ vadim rizov, filmmaker magazine: Sundance 2023: 5 Seasons of Revolution, My Animal, Selected Shorts, The Tuba Thieves and Milisuthando

“As it was, my festival feature highlight (I am trying to close with optimism) was Milisuthando, the debut feature by Milisuthando Bongela. [...] Nearly two hours, Milisuthando is a sprawl, but the only one of the festival I found legitimately unpredictable start-to-finish.”

→ robert daniels, rogerebert.com: Sundance 2023: Fantastic Machine, Milithusando, The Eternal Memory

“Eloquently shot and sharply edited by Hankyeol Lee, Bongela’s “Milisuthando” is thematically shocking and emotionally unflinching [...] “Milisuthando” intertwines the inequities of Bongela's personal past with the systemic shortcomings they were forged in and wields a sledgehammer against history.”

→ lovia gyarkye, the hollywood reporter: ‘Milisuthando’ Review: Poetic Meditations on a Complicated South African History

“Under Bongela’s direction, memories are pliant forces. They stretch into the past, haunt the present and creep into the future. [...] In exceptional fashion, Bongela and DP and editor Hankyeol Lee stitch together and enhance archival footage to map this history. [...] Milisuthando is an ambitious project that forthrightly navigates the tangled mess we call identities, trying to honor their multiplicity without succumbing to pretension. It can be dense and overwhelming at times, as the film, running more than two hours long, swirls around histories, painful truths, impressive revelations and Bongela’s poetic meditations.”

→ k. austin collins, rolling stone: 12 Best Films and Performances of Sundance 2023

“Milisuthando Bongela’s inward-looking, historically adept documentary may be — alongside Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt — the single best film of the entire festival. Milisuthando not only challenges us to know and remember: it reminds us that we are inseparable from our histories.”

→ pat mullen, pov magazine: 2023 Sundance Film Festival Report on Docs

“For my money, though, the standout documentary of Sundance is Milisuthando Bongela’s World Cinema competition title Milisuthando in a runaway. This dextrously layered essay film examines identity and apartheid through a deeply personal lens. In terms of aesthetics, scope, and ambition, nothing else on Sundance’s documentary front matched it. Milisuthando stood out as a distinctive feat of auteur cinema and should enjoy a strong run on the festival circuit. In addition to delivering a probing and complex interrogation of identity and belonging, Milisuthando marked one of Sundance’s notable works for advancing one’s idea of what documentary can be.”

→ pat mullen, pov magazine: Milisuthando Review: Radical Decolonial Cinema

“This exhilarating auteur film by Milisuthando Bongela heralds the most distinctive voice in competition this year. This years-in-the-making film is aesthetically rigorous and thematically ambitious. [...] Bongela creates a radical form of decolonial cinema that shatters all the rules. Formally, Milisuthando is a kaleidoscopic essay film in the fashion of Sans Soleil and A Night of Knowing Nothing, and like those film’s it’s a hypnotic journey through media and memory.”

→ stephen saito, the moveable fest: Sundance 2023 Review: A Divided Land Creates a Conflicted Mind in the Emotionally Rich “Milisuthando”

“With editor and cinematographer Hankyeol Lee, Bongela magnificently reconstructs her own consciousness of these events as a puzzle that is likely to always have a missing piece yet the jagged edges fit in unexpected ways, blending the past and present and her personal archives against the full sweep of South African history.”

→ alissa wilkinson, vox: 17 movies to watch out for in 2023

“One of the most formally daring documentaries of the year [...] The formal experimentation of the film is entrancing and dreamlike, feeling out the borders that our communities build for us and complicating narratives about race and oppression in modernity.”

→ christine jean-baptiste, elle: The Best Sundance Films to Put on Your Radar This Year

“To be invited into this piece of uncovered history is a privilege. Milisuthando is full of brilliance, thought, and heart. Bongela is one to keep on your radar.”

→ shane slater, awards radar: Sundance Film Festival Review: ‘Milisuthando’ Profoundly Reckons with the Legacy of Apartheid South Africa

“Milisuthando is truly a multi-faceted account of the lasting legacy of apartheid in South Africa. Though it’s billed as a personal essay, it feels more monumental than that. Rather, it’s a profound work of art that evokes the essence of a nation through its people and the ever-shifting social structures that moulded them.”

→ 🎧 nicolas rapold & eric hynes, the last thing i saw podcast: Ep. 156: Sundance 2023 One with Eric Hynes

   29:32 - 36:25

“It’s a movie that grows before your eyes [...] This movie is like a living thing.” 

→ 🎧 aisha harris, npr pop culture happy hour podcast: Highlights from the 2023 Sundance Film Festival

“it's really hard to describe. It's kind of a personal essay set to really arresting images, a very personal essay.”