Silwerskermfees 2026 Hosts Free Community Screenings in Grassy Park

The 14th annual kykNET Silwerskermfees film festival is once again taking South African cinema beyond its established festival venues, bringing two free community screenings to the Grassy Park Civic Centre on 20 and 21 August 2026.

Presented in partnership with Sunshine Cinema, the solar-powered screenings form part of the festival’s ongoing commitment to developing audiences by taking carefully selected films into Cape Town communities. The initiative proved a huge success in 2025, when screenings in Grassy Park and Wynberg brought films such as Finding Optel and The Heart is a Muscle directly to local audiences.

Taking Cinema Back to the Community

This year’s programme features Al Wat Ek Weet on Thursday, 20 August, followed by From Dust, We Spin on Friday, 21 August. Both screenings are free, although audiences are encouraged to reserve tickets through Quicket. The official programme lists both community screenings for 18:00 at the Grassy Park Civic Centre.

Award-winning filmmaker Nadine Cloete, whose extensive body of work includes Action Kommandant: The Ashley Kriel Story, will serve as MC for the community screenings.
The community-focused format will include local storytelling, interaction and opportunities for audiences to engage beyond simply watching a film. The screenings also form part of the broader Silwerskerm vision of making local cinema accessible to people who may not otherwise attend a major film festival.

That approach is particularly meaningful when the films themselves carry strong Cape Town connections.

A Cape Town Story Unfolds

Directed by Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs, Al Wat Ek Weet is a drama adapted from Marita van der Vyver’s youth novel. The film follows 17-year-old Gabriel Lombard after the death of his mother and his father’s retreat into a clinic forces him to leave the leafy mountain suburbs and move into a cramped Woodstock home with his aunt and grandmother.

As Gabriel attempts to bury his grief beneath bravado, lies and an increasingly vivid imagination, his life begins to change. Therapy introduces him to Sasha, while a school poetry slam pushes him towards confronting emotions he has tried desperately to avoid.

The film’s Cape Town identity goes deeper than its setting, with the Kaapse Klopse and the city’s streets forming part of Gabriel’s imaginative world. The Silwerskermfees has described its community screenings as a way of giving back to communities that have informed, inspired or even helped produce the films being shown.

Al Wat Ek Weet: Filmmaking Duo Celebrates the Cape and Its People

From the Dust to the Spinning Pitch

Friday’s screening brings a very different but equally Cape Town-rooted story to Grassy Park.

Directed by Julia Jansch, From Dust, We Spin is a human-interest sport documentary that explores the world of car spinning through the experiences of a troubled young woman from the Cape Flats and a spinner haunted by his past.

As she enters a dangerous world of smoke, screaming tyres and adrenaline, their lives begin to mirror each other. The film explores cycles of trauma, choices, redemption and the possibility of finding a way forward in an environment often viewed only through its more sensational aspects.

The documentary is particularly fitting for a community screening because it places people and experiences from the Cape Flats at the centre of its story, allowing audiences to see aspects of their own world represented on screen.

More Than Watching Films

The Grassy Park screenings are ultimately about more than providing free entertainment. They form part of a broader effort to close the distance between the film industry and the communities whose stories increasingly find their way onto South African screens.

Sunshine Cinema’s solar-powered mobile screening technology makes it possible to take cinema directly into communities, while the accompanying interaction and filmmaking initiatives create opportunities for audiences to engage with the creative process itself.

With Al Wat Ek Weet and From Dust, We Spin, the 2026 Silwerskermfees Film Festival continues a community-screening tradition that puts Cape Town audiences closer to the stories being told about them, around them and, in many cases, by them.

NB. The Community Screening Tickets may already be Fully Booked Out… BUT…

A Limited Number of Tickets may become available at the door to fill extra seats created by no-shows.