Cape Town Productions Selected for the 14th Silwerskermfees Programme

Ten Cape Town-filmed productions have earned a place in the 14^th Silwerskermfees 2026 programme, showcasing the city’s creative talent, diverse locations and world-class production capabilities. Among the featured projects is the highly anticipated screening of the first episode of Spinners Season 2. The selection comprises short films, feature films and a television series from both established and emerging local filmmakers. 

The films are:  

1. Trilstraat 

2. As ek kon kies 

3. N’ Poppy op die heuwel  

4. Yaardt Queen  

5. Change  

6. Verwerking  

7. Silas en die Ysbeer  

8. Landymyn  

9. Al wat ek week 

10. Spinners Season 2 Episode 1  

Collectively, the projects span a range of genres, including drama, fantasy, family and metafiction, highlighting the diversity and creativity of Cape Town’s screen industry. 

Two of the selected projects, Silas en die Ysbeer and Spinners, were supported through our second Film Fund call, highlighting the fund’s commitment to developing locally produced content and fostering South African storytelling. 

Silwerskermfees takes place from 19 August to 22 August and tickets are available at Quicket.  

More information on each film:  

1. Shortfilm: Trilstraat 

Synopsis: 

On their way to their car after an evening of exciting life decisions, a couple is caught off guard, and their conflicting reactions lead to disillusionments about each other. As they navigate the  dark streets of Observatory, they must find not only a way home, but a way back to each other.

Cast & Crew: 

2. Shortfilm: As Ek Kon Kies  

Synopsis:

During a church service, Kyleigh celebrates her engagement as an affirmation of the life she has chosen: one of faith, family and community. But when Lara, a woman she once loved, quietly enters the room, the mood of the morning shifts. As they make polite conversation, the past starts pressing gently but persistently against the present. As ek kon kies examines how one moment can shatter certainty, and it asks whether the love you choose, is the love you believe you deserve. 

3. ’n Poppy Op Die Heuwel  

Synopsis: When their beloved grandmother Poppy dies, siblings Laila and Josh return to the Namaqualand farm where she spent most of her life. For Laila, the purpose is clear: Poppy must be buried beside her own parents on the land where generations of their family once lived. However, the farm has changed hands, and Laila finds herself at odds with the new owners, who refuse permission for the burial . Unable to accept this, Laila decides to act and fulfil Poppy’s wishes. Thus, the family must decide what it truly means to honour those we have lost, and what it costs to claim a past that no longer has a place for them. 

4. Shortfilm: Yaardt Queen  

Synopsis: On the Cape Flats, dreams rise from every corner to the music pulsing through the streets. Keisha lives a double life: isolated by day under her mother’s watchful eye, and a DJ and rising star by night in the electrifying underground Yaadt scene her father once ruled. But when she uncovers the truth about his death, the music stops being an escape and becomes a reckoning. As beats and buried secrets collide, Keisha and her mother are forced to confront a past that could either break them or set them free.  

5. Short Film: Change  

Synopsis: Cape Town. 2025. Ruan, a managing director of a large corporation, realises he’s being ambushed by a new cashless policy enforced by their mother company in the UK. From the perspective of a two-rand coin, we watch as Ruan tries to stop the inevitable. Along the way, we get glimpses into the lives of city-dwelling South Africans, with each character portraying a different socioeconomic class and perspective on money. The film shows what change represents to the distinct yet connected ensemble of characters and asks: What is the significance of coins in a time when tap to pay is the order of the day? And at what cost are we going cashless? 

6. Short Film: Verwerking  

Synopsis: A screenwriter struggles with a scene centred around gender-based violence. As he sits feverishly typing at his desk, the words begin to distort the reality around him. The word “Mother” on the page causes a woman to appear in the room; the word “Father,” a man to strike her. Spaces and places start collapsing into one another; light and time bend around the writer, and he finds himself confronted by a horrific moment that has haunted him for years.  

7. Feature Film: Silas en die Ysbeer op Tafelberg  

Synopsis: Eight-year-old Silas lives with his mother and beloved grandmother at the foot of Table Mountain, where stories of Dreamland capture his imagination. After his grandmother’s sudden death, Silas refuses to accept the loss and believes she has simply become lost in Dreamland. He journeys into Droomland to search for her, but it no longer looks like the way he remembers it. Silas feels trapped in an endless loop. Meanwhile, his fearless neighbour Willemien and a strange creature named Brommel unexpectedly appear at his side, and a terrifying polar bear starts hunting them. 

8. Feature Film: Landmyn  

Synopsis: For the first time in a decade, siblings Colette, Johan, and Lisa reunite for a winter holiday on the South African coast. Each has built a life elsewhere to escape the instability of their childhood and the long shadow of their mother, Annatjie. The gathering shifts when Colette reveals she has invited her to join them. Annatjie arrives like a hurricane, pulling the family back into patterns of resentment, survival, and unfinished history. As the days pass, Annatjie’s presence collapses the distance the siblings have built, drawing them back into roles shaped by obligation and dependency. Each of them is forced to confront how much of their lives still bends around her gravity, and whether that hold can finally be broken. Written and directed by Nico Scheepers, LANDMYN is an intimate chamber drama about inherited trauma, obligation, and the difficult act of letting go. 

9. Feature Film : Al wat ek weet  

Synopsis: When a car accident kills his mother and his father retreats into a clinic, seventeen-year-old Gabriel Lombard is uprooted from the leafy mountain suburbs and is sent to live in a cramped Woodstock house with his aunt Lotta and grandmother Lenie. Determined not to crumble like his father, he buries his grief behind a cool front, wild lies and an overripe imagination, where a Kaapse Klopse brass band chases him through the streets. In therapy, he meets Sasha and falls for her. To get closer to her, he is strong-armed into the school’s poetry slam. But the nearer the competition comes, the harder his buried grief pushes to the surface, until the boy who runs from everything must finally turn and face it.  

10. Series: Spinners

Synopsis: The Underdogs have become massive spinning stars living a new life in Joburg, but Ethan soon realises he cannot escape his past. It comes calling when Hercules needs him for one last job, and he is confronted by the biggest crime family in Soweto when its troubled son, Sayi, becomes his main spinning rival.