Bantu Film Festival challenges Botswana to build real film economy

There is a particular quietness that settles over a cinema after the credits roll. At the fifth Bantu Film Festival this week in Gaborone, that quiet has not lasted long. Conversations spill into the foyer, into who actually owns the stories we keep telling about ourselves.

Founded in 2022, it has grown from a hopeful local experiment into a Pan-African gathering that refuses to treat film as pure entertainment. This year the timing feels deliberate. Botswana is marking sixty years of independence, and the organisers are asking a harder question: can the country’s creative industries move from applause to actual livelihoods? One film that has lingered is Netumbo: A Leader Beyond Politics, produced by Sophie Haikali. The documentary follows Namibia’s first woman president from a northern village through the liberation years to the highest office.