The film ‘Laundry’ by Zamo Mkhwanazi takes us to South Africa in 1968, to a whites-only neighborhood of Johannesburg. The family of the story’s protagonist Khutala runs a laundry while the regime targets Black-owned businesses.
“This is based on a story that happened to my mother’s family,” director Zamo Mkhwanazi told Africanews.
“Those events happened in the late 50s; however, this film is set in the late 60s because it was a very interesting moment in terms of the beginning of the resuscitation of the struggle after the leaders had been imprisoned. Any resistance had been destroyed, so this was a moment where there was really no one fighting for Black people.”
“I’m quite a collaborative director; I’m always interested to see the ideas that the performers have. I feel that I had that, particularly with my lead—he worked very hard and asked many questions before we even got on set, so I was very excited to see what he would do.”
For the director, it is essential for South Africans to see that activists, thinkers, and filmmakers continue to speak the truth.
“The conversation on reparations, restitution, and redistribution of wealth in South Africa has come to a complete stop,” Mkhwanazi says. “It’s completely ignored, and we just act like everyone must carry on and build their lives, but we’ve been stolen from. Not having that conversation is about entrenching injustice and allowing room for more injustice.”
This year’s Geneva International Film Festival and Human Rights Forum presents a selection of fiction and documentary films that examine authoritarian and international abuses. It also highlights collective struggles.
‘Laundry,’ directed by Zamo Mkhwanazi, is part of the competition for the 2026 edition, under the theme “Between Resistance and Revolt: The Power of Images.”
The festival is underway in Geneva and runs until 15 March 2026.
