District 9 (2009), Vaya (2016), Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema (2008), A World Apart (1988), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), Road to Your Heart (2014), Lost in the Stars (1974), Malunde (2001) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Johannesburg, South Africa movies.
Storyline: In 1982, a massive star ship bearing a bedraggled alien population, nicknamed "The Prawns," appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. Twenty-eight years later, the initial welcome by the human population has faded. The refugee camp where the aliens were located has deteriorated into a militarized ghetto called District 9, where they are confined and exploited in squalor. In 2010, the munitions corporation, Multi-National United, is contracted to forcibly evict the population with operative Wikus van der Merwe in charge. In this operation, Wikus is exposed to a strange alien chemical and must rely on the help of his only two new 'Prawn' friends.
Plot Keywords: alien, reporter, military officer, love interest, mutant, creative, thrilling ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Three people board the train bound for Johannesburg. Strangers, each on their own mission, with a simple task to complete and in search of family to help them. But when they are betrayed by the very people whose protection they sought, they find themselves trapped in the city - invisible and alone. Vaya interweaves three separate plots, that intersect and intertwine in a gripping, deeply moving and often funny narrative about struggling for survival and dignity in the city. In the first story a rural man has been promised a job, by his big city cousin. The money from the job will allow him to pay lobola back home which will change his life forever. He's excited; his cousin is an important man, whose patronage the village has relied on for many years. To work for him is a great honour. But on arrival he discovers that the job is not quite what he thought. He is required to kill his cousin's rival. In the second story a young man is sent to Jozi to reclaim his father's body, only to discover that the body has already been claimed. His father's hitherto unknown 'city family' has taken it, and they are not giving it back. The young must find a way to return the body to his rural home or risk the family reputation forever. In the third story a young woman takes her aunt's young daughter to Joburg to live with her mother for the first time. But she has her own plans. To dump the child and finally escape the boredom of rural life to explore her own dreams and ambitions in the city. But she soon discovers that her aunt, is not who she thought she was. She runs a shebeen and lives with an extremely devious gangster who supports her. She is unable to take care of herself let alone a small child. The young woman must now choose between her own dreams or saving the small child and ruining everything.
Plot Keywords: stranger, family, south african man, rival, friend, gripping, emotional ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Starting off with simple smash and grabs, and petty crime, Lucky Kunene quickly graduates to more aggressive heists such as armed robbery and carjacking. Soon, Lucky realizes he needs a bigger score to fulfill his goals of making it big, and escaping from the slums, to a dream house by the sea. Kunene hatches an elaborate and violent plan to make his fortune - hijacking buildings from landlords of Johannesburg tenements by winning the favor of the tenants and then holding their rent hostage from the landowners. His high-profile real estate acquisitions attract the attention of the local police force who have no qualms about using unprovoked brutality to bring him down. His trouble with the law, coupled with an escalating war between a local drug lord, creates a tense standoff: both sides are closing in, and Kunene must stay one step ahead--or his empire, and his life, will come crashing down.
Plot Keywords: gangsters, petty criminal, boy, thrilling, raw, johannesburg, south africa, luck ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: 1963. Thirteen year old Molly Roth, the eldest of three offspring of Gus and Diana Roth, lives a carefree life as part of the affluent white minority in South Africa. Race is a non-issue for her as although, under apartheid, the Roths largely exist among other white people like them, she feels equally comfortable around the black people in her life, such as their servants and her parents' black friends. Beyond knowing that they are busy in their work, Molly is unaware of the full extent of what her parents do, Gus a leading member of the South African Communist Party and Ruth an anti-apartheid journalist who also secretly works for the underground in support of the outlawed African National Congress. Shortly after Gus quietly escapes the country to evade probable arrest by the government - Molly believing it just a short work related trip - Molly's carefree life starts to unravel when Diana is detained for ninety days under a new law that allows such detention without ever even being charged with a criminal offense. The goal of Diana's interrogators, led by Inspector Muller, is to get her to divulge details especially of the underground, most specifically proverbial "names". Beyond missing her mother, Molly begins to resent the anti-apartheid work which has directly and indirectly impacted her life in a negative way, she wanting a mother, not an activist-mother. As the situation with Diana evolves, which includes someone needing to act as caregivers to Molly and her younger sisters while Diana is in detention, Molly gets a broader perspective of her situation under apartheid as she is able to see more of life just outside her protected white enclave, and as she is made aware of what Diana is trying to achieve for society in her work.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: daughter, mother, father, activist, emotional, spirited, south africa ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: South African church minister Steven Kumalo is summoned from his village to Johannesburg. There he finds that his son Absolom has been jailed in connection with a robbery in which a white man was killed. The father of the white man, James Jarvis, is a supporter of apartheid, the separation of the races which is the law of South Africa. When they encounter each other, both Kumalo and Jarvis come to unexpected realizations not only about their sons, but about the nature of their own humanity.—Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
Plot Keywords: priest, bigot, son, preacher, father, bleak, emotional ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Basson has to complete specific tasks to earn the family company, and he has only five days to complete them and make it to his father's funeral.
Plot Keywords: father, dying person, son, man, love interest, stranger, mysterious woman ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Brock Peters (To Kill a Mockingbird) is Stephen Kumalo, a black South African minister searching the unfamiliar back alleys and shantytowns of Johannesburg for his son, Absalom.
Plot Keywords: preacher, pregnant woman, criminal, son, father, gutsy, emotional ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: South Africa, post-apartheid: WONDERBOY, a wiry 11-year-old, is trying to survive on the streets of crime-ridden Johannesburg. KOBUS, a former soldier of the apartheid army, can't forget the "good old days" when he was "somebody" - a man honoured for his bravery. Now he's hoping for something to make life worth it again. KOBUS's takes on a job as a travelling delivery man. His pick-up loaded to the brim with tins of RAINBOW WAX - to shine up the nation's furniture, KOBUS meets up with WONDERBOY at a traffic intersection, where the boy eagerly cleans the car's windscreen, hoping for some change. Gangster STIX arrives on the scene, waving a gun - he wants to kill Wonderboy. The boy has only one chance: to leap into KOBUS's car, urging him to drive like hell because he is about to be "car-jacked". KOBUS buys it and they race off, shaking the gunmen off their tail. KOBUS wants to get rid of the "little gangster" as soon as he can. But he needs someone to guard the car - and he is not much of a salesman. WONDERBOY uses all his street-wise skills to make RAINBOW WAX big business! And so begins a journey in which they move from mutual antagonism and suspicion, even hatred, to friendship, in which they come to terms with a troubled past and create an unexpected future.—Steven Canclini
Plot Keywords: soldier, street urchin, missing person, drug dealer, father figure, emotional, engaging ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Contract hitman Jay Mallory works for an unknown organization. He returns to his apartment one day to find his wife, Celandine, gone. Mallory initially thinks that Celandine has left on her own, but soon, believes her disappearance may be associated with his last job. The organization assigns Mallory another job in, England, about which Mallory feels there's something unusual. He's given little information, including not knowing who the target is, and that it too, is associated with Celandine's disappearance. Despite feeling he's being set up, Mallory decides to take the job anyway to see how it plays out, and if it leads him back to Celandine.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: maniac, teacher, cousin, psychic, concerned mother, detective, frightening ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In Johannesburg, an American parole breaker unknowingly picks up a rental car that will tie him to a web of corrupt local police.
Plot Keywords: parole officer, thrilling, south africa, johannesburg, south africa, corrupt police, discovery, 2010s ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Vusi Madlazi returns to the South African village he left as a young boy (he was organizing against apartheid, and left in fear of his life) to bury his father. He meets up with his brother Ernest, who tells him their other brother Stephen couldn't be contacted. Vusi goes to Johannesburg to find him, but at first can only find his neighbor/girlfriend, Karin, a stripper. Vusi proceeds to learn how conditions have changed since the end of apartheid, not always for the better for black men.—Jon Reeves <jreeves@imdb.com>
Plot Keywords: activist, brother, stripper, drug lord, drug addict, girlfriend, fiery ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: From the makers of The Last Exorcism comes a boldly original vision of horror. What if the most chilling novel of all time was actually based on a true account of a horrific experiment gone awry? When he is suspended from his university job for his outlandish ideas, Professor John Venkenheim leads a documentary film crew to the rim of the Arctic Circle in a desperate effort to vindicate his academic reputation. His theory: Mary Shelley's ghastly story, "Frankenstein," is, in fact, a work of non-fiction disguised as fantasy. In the vast, frozen wilderness, Venkenheim and his team search for the legendary monster, a creature mired in mystery and drenched in blood. What they find is an unspeakable truth more terrifying than any fiction...a nightmare from which there is no waking.—Image Entertainment
Plot Keywords: young man, childhood friend, schoolteacher, estranged father, orphan, priest, confident ...
Movie Details Click Here!