South Africa / 2017 / 58mins / Documentary, History / English, Sotho and Zulu

On the morning of June 16, 1976, students gathered to protest the use of the Afrikaans language in schools. What started out as a planned peaceful march turned into a bloody confrontation with the police. The student protests spread to other parts of South Africa, causing an economic instability that rapidly plunged the country into crisis. Uprize! looks at the political, social, and cultural conditions that shaped the uprising, how those ideas we transformed into liberatory action, and how those actions helped shape the democratic society we live in today.

Sifiso Khanyile

Sifiso Khanyile is a Producer/Director for Anaphora Films. He has works as writer, archive researcher and has worked as a content producer on SABC shows such as Imagine Afrika, Zooming In on Men, Talk SA and Hatch. After studying, Khanyile directed Spiderman and Romeo (2008), a ground breaking short documentary about the thrills and dangers of train surfing on the notorious Metrorail Soweto line. The film was screened at numerous local and international festivals and shown on BBC and Sechuan TV (China). Khanyile's first feature documentary directorial credits include the acclaimed Uprize! (2017) and A New Country (2020). Learn More