South African Feature God’s Work Selected for Joburg Film Festival
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- 2 min read
God’s Work, the uncompromising South African feature directed by Michael James, has been selected to screen at the 8th edition of the Joburg Film Festival on Sunday, 8 March, at 16:15 at Artistry in Sandton.
Set within an abandoned inner-city building, God’s Work confronts homelessness not as abstraction, but as lived economic exclusion. Hunger, addiction, fractured memory, and systemic neglect shape the interior and exterior worlds of men pushed beyond society’s margins. Stark social realities collide with surreal psychological landscapes, creating a film that resists easy categorisation.
The film embraces a hybrid cinematic language – blending documentary textures, staged encounters, archival material, and symbolic imagery – to question how cinema frames lives that exist outside systems of access and visibility.
“South Africa’s deepening social fractures are no longer peripheral,” says Producer Sithabile Mkhize. “People are being steadily removed from opportunity, recognition, and support. God’s Work offers a direct encounter with these realities.”
Director Michael James describes the film as an act of bearing witness: “This film is ultimately an exercise in empathy. Cinema allows us to dismantle distance—to attempt to see one another without mediation or judgement."
Early responses have described God’s Work as “a film that does not ask for sympathy but demands reckoning” and “a powerful confrontation with the human cost of inequality.”
The film features emotionally grounded performances from South African talents Thobani Nzuza, Mbulelo Radebe, Omega Ncube, Siya Xaba, Zenzo Msomi and Nduduzo Kholwa. Cinematography by Jared Hinde captures the textured physicality of the setting, while George Acogny’s haunting score deepens the psychological and emotional tension of the narrative.
God’s Work is produced by Maverick Entertainment, Amafrika Films, and Mojo Entertainment, with support from the KZN Film and Tourism Authority, the Durban Film Office, and the National Film and Television Foundation. Producers: Sithabile Mkhize; Executive Producers: Toni Monty, Gary Springer; Co-Producer: Marco Orsini
God’s Work screens Sunday, 8 March at 16:15 at Artistry, 22 Fredman Drive, Sandown, Sandton.
Submitted by:
Sharlene Versfeld
Versfeld & Associates Public Relations and Communications
Email: sharlene@versfeld.co.za
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