WeeklySA_AdminSYMBOLISM: A haunting new short film uses poetry and surreal imagery to confront the broken promises of post-apartheid South Africa—and the resilience of a generation forced to find its own way…
By WSAM Reporter
Premiering on Freedom Day at The Bioscope Independent Cinema, It’s Lit arrives not as easy viewing, but as a jolt—an unflinching, poetic confrontation with the reality facing South Africa’s youth.
Executive produced and narrated by poet Les Makotoko, and directed by Hallie Haller, the short film leans into surrealism to explore what it means to come of age in a country many young people feel has quietly failed them.
Producer Gugu Radebe Xaba completes the creative trio behind a project that blends poetry, symbolism, and stark visual storytelling.
Set against a backdrop of unemployment, inequality, and social decay, It’s Lit transforms familiar South African struggles—rolling blackouts, protest action, crime, and crumbling infrastructure—into a dreamlike, unsettling cinematic language. The effect is deliberate: to make audiences feel what has become dangerously normal.
Makotoko’s narration anchors the film, guiding viewers through a landscape shaped by deferred dreams and broken promises. His words cut to the core of a generational crisis.
“We were told that education would protect us, but that promise wasn’t kept,” he says. “I wrote this for those who did everything right and still found it wasn’t enough.”
That tension—between expectation and reality—sits at the heart of the film. It follows young people navigating a society where the social contract feels fractured, and where survival itself has become an act of resistance.
For Haller, the choice of surrealism was essential rather than stylistic.
“There is an urgency to the message,” she explains. “We wanted to interrogate what we’ve all come to accept as normal. The nightmare imagery became the most honest way to do that.”
The result is a film that doesn’t offer neat answers. Instead, it poses a haunting question that lingers long after the credits roll: where are the children headed?
Its Freedom Day premiere added weight to that question. While the national holiday commemorates political liberation, It’s Lit challenges audiences to consider what freedom means for a generation still locked out of economic opportunity and social mobility.
The screening drew creatives, cultural commentators, and young voices into a shared space of reflection—one that moved beyond celebration into uncomfortable but necessary conversation about accountability, inheritance, and the future.
Importantly, the film doesn’t collapse into despair. Beneath its stark imagery runs a quieter current: resilience. Even in a system that feels broken, young people continue to create, resist, and reimagine their futures.
Following its debut, It’s Lit is set to reach wider audiences through digital platforms, community screenings, and cultural venues across the country—taking its message beyond the cinema and into the spaces where its themes are lived daily.
If anything, the film is less a conclusion than a provocation.
It forces a reckoning: not just with the state of the country, but with the role each generation plays in shaping what comes next.
And it makes one thing clear—young South Africans are no longer waiting to be saved.
