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The South African
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The South African
6 movie and TV filming locations in SA you can visit in real life
South Africa has quietly become one of the world's go-to filming locations. With its breathtaking landscapes, modern infrastructure, and versatile terrain, it's no wonder major film and TV productions keep setting up camp here. But the best part? Many of the places you've seen on screen are open to the public. Here are six filming locations across South Africa that you can actually visit… Cape Town is South Africa's crown jewel when it comes to film production. The city and its surroundings have doubled for 18th-century Caribbean ports, modern African capitals, and even alien planets! The most iconic example is Black Sails , the pirate drama shot primarily at Cape Town Film Studios. The massive sets included full-size pirate ships and detailed colonial forts. While the sets aren't always open to the public, you can visit nearby filming locations like Hout Bay, Simon's Town, and Table Mountain, which have featured in everything from Blood Diamond to Safe House . The Drakensberg range is as dramatic as it gets – jagged cliffs, green valleys, and misty peaks. These ancient mountains stood in for the jungles of the Congo in The Legend of Tarzan (2016) and have appeared in period action series like Warrior . The sweeping shots of wilderness are no CGI trick. That raw, untamed beauty is real – and it's waiting for you to hike, climb, or simply stare up in awe. Neill Blomkamp's District 9 didn't shy away from showing Johannesburg's gritty urban sprawl. The film used real neighbourhoods, scrapyards, and townships to build its sci-fi refugee zones. The visual impact was unforgettable, but so was the social commentary – rooted in real South African history. You won't find alien spacecraft hovering over the city, but you can explore the culture-rich neighbourhoods that gave the film its pulse. While you're there, be sure to visit Maboneng Precinct for local art, food, and design, and stop by the Apartheid Museum for essential context. The lush, forested landscapes of The Giver (2014) were filmed in Tsitsikamma, a jewel along South Africa's Garden Route. The film's dreamlike setting was no fantasy – this coastal forest is real and teeming with life. With towering trees, dramatic river gorges, and suspension bridges over crashing waves, it's one of the most cinematic spots you can experience with your own eyes. Roland Emmerich's prehistoric epic 10,000 BC used the Cederberg Mountains to portray a wild and ancient world. Though the movie's accuracy is questionable, the scenery is spot-on. The Cederberg's orange rock formations, open desert spaces, and ancient San rock art sites give it an otherworldly feel that's perfect for explorers. You don't need a time machine to walk through this prehistoric landscape. Port Edward and its surrounding coastline on the Wild Coast have hosted multiple seasons of Survivor South Africa . With its rough seas, remote beaches, and thick vegetation, it's the perfect backdrop for survival challenges – and an unforgettable travel destination. You can walk the same beaches and forests where contestants battled it out, minus the stress of tribal council. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
The Independent
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Apocalypse constantly: The perverse reasons we love to watch ourselves die on screen
I t has been showered with meteors and blitzed by the Bomb, eaten by fauna and throttled by flora. It has faced acts of God and alien invaders and sentient man-made parasites, which escaped from a lab. Director Roland Emmerich's disaster movie 2012 (2009) upended the globe with a massive solar flare. Richard Kelly's arthouse oddity Southland Tales (2006) opted for the inadvertent catalyst of two strangers shaking hands. Forget Janet Leigh in the shower or Drew Barrymore on the phone: it's the planet itself that is cinema's greatest scream queen, wheeled out regularly to be tortured and murdered in interesting ways. There's only one thing Hollywood likes better than a happy ending, it seems, and that's an unhappy ending for absolutely everybody concerned. The world dies yet again in The End , a lavish, drunken curtain-call of a musical in which Tilda Swinton plays mother to humanity's last hold-outs. The scene is a salt mine half a mile underground that has been lovingly made over as a well-appointed family home. There are Monet paintings on the wall and a deferential dancing butler who dispenses fine wine every night. But the planet has burned, which means that everyone upstairs is now dead. Of course, climate change is to blame, the people in the bunker concede. But they're still quibbling over the science and blithely absolve themselves of all guilt. They refill their glasses and beam at one another across the dining room table as the doomsday clock ticks well past midnight. In most movie musicals, the songs are perky and optimistic; gateways to the future. Here they're desperate pick-me-ups and nostalgic bawlers, hopelessly nodding at the rear-view mirror. Indirectly – probably unintentionally – The End nods to the past as well. The movie is written and directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, surely the ideal name for a director embarking on a film about man's capacity to destroy the planet. And just as the film's characters drag their back-stories into the underground bunker, so too do the main actors who play them. Swinton's Mother, for instance, might be seen as the timid, fragrant flipside of the clownish controller the actor portrayed in Bong Joon-ho's dystopian thriller Snowpiercer (2013). George MacKay, who co-stars as the tragic, innocent Son, filled a similar role in Kevin Macdonald's underrated English fall-out drama How I Live Now (2013). Michael Shannon's bullish turn as Father stirs obvious memories of his lights-out performance as raging Curtis LaForche, the Midwestern prophet of doom from Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter (2011). Maybe it's the fate of every new apocalypse-themed movie to carry the ghosts of the ones that went before. All of which is to say that there is a lovely in-built irony to every apocalypse film. In depicting the collapse of fragile planet Earth, they constitute what is arguably the most robust and durable film genre of them all. DW Griffith had no sooner established the template for narrative cinema with The Birth of a Nation (1915) when the Danish director August Blom was making The End of the World (1916), a prototype disaster movie that effectively wrote the script for all the copycats that followed. The end, in other words, was right there at the start. The evidence suggests that our planet gets the apocalypse films it deserves – or at least the films that address its inhabitants' most pressing concerns. Blom's silent film was prompted by public panic surrounding Haley's Comet, which had blazed over Denmark just a few years previously. The genre classics of the Cold War era – On the Beach (1959), Dr Strangelove (1964), Planet of the Apes (1968) – were preoccupied with the atom bomb; the films of the Seventies and Eighties with overpopulation, pollution and the hazards of runaway technology. During the first Covid lockdown of April 2020, viewers had to click back through the archive in search of pandemic-appropriate entertainment. The cinemas were shuttered and film production was mothballed. But Outbreak (1995) and Contagion (2011) became the season's big streaming blockbusters. Naturally, each worry – each crisis – merits a slightly different response. This explains why a film about alien invaders might be more gung-ho and exciting than a film about the aftermath of a thermonuclear war or the collapse of the ocean current system. It also accounts for the uncompromising bleakness of The End . Oppenheimer's musical is the latest addition to a burgeoning sub-genre of so-called 'cli-fi' – speculative climate fiction about the dead planet that awaits right around the next bend. Cli-fi might take the form of a brash satire, like Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (2021), or a soulful cats-and-capybara cartoon, like Gints Zilbalodis's Flow (2024), or a sad singalong inside an underground bunker, but it inhabits a murky, post-apocalyptic moral universe that is worlds away from the primary-coloured terrain of a film such as Deep Impact (1998) or The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). In the purest, truest cli-fi pictures, there are no Martians to battle or zombies to flee. The only real villain is climate breakdown itself, which is another way of saying that the only real villain is us. Doomsday bop: Tilda Swinton and George MacKay sing through the pain in 'The End' (Neon) The characters in The End sing songs to cheer themselves up and to steady their nerves. I wonder if that's why we watch films about the end of the world. Perversely, they might be a distraction from doom-scrolling on our phones, if only because it's a grubby relief to see people who are worse off than we are and a comfort to see chaos framed as a tidy two-hour drama. Also, I think, because the genre's longevity carries an underlying message of hope, assuring us that we've been here before and we'll be here again, even as it bellows in our faces that the end is upon us. The apocalypse movie deploys a variety of tactics. It can be angry or anguished; it can rage, plead or thrill. But this is cinema's equivalent of the hard-bitten pub landlord who calls last orders and time and steers his patrons to the door, safe in the knowledge that he'll be serving them again the next day.
The National
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Best photos of March 16: An Egyptian ‘musaharati' to Blood Moon in Dubai
Produced: Lionsgate Films, Shanghai Ryui Entertainment, Street Light Entertainment Directed: Roland Emmerich Cast: Ed Skrein, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Aaron Eckhart, Luke Evans, Nick Jonas, Mandy Moore, Darren Criss Rating: 3.5/5 stars Name: QyubicStarted: October 2023Founder: Namrata RainaBased: DubaiSector: E-commerceCurrent number of staff: 10Investment stage: Pre-seed Initial investment: Undisclosed Men – semi-finals 57kg – Tak Chuen Suen (MAC) beat Phuong Xuan Nguyen (VIE) 29-28; Almaz Sarsembekov (KAZ) beat Zakaria Eljamari (UAE) by points 30-27. 67kg – Mohammed Mardi (UAE) beat Huong The Nguyen (VIE) by points 30-27; Narin Wonglakhon (THA) v Mojtaba Taravati Aram (IRI) by points 29-28. 60kg – Yerkanat Ospan (KAZ) beat Amir Hosein Kaviani (IRI) 30-27; Long Doan Nguyen (VIE) beat Ibrahim Bilal (UAE) 29-28 63.5kg – Abil Galiyev (KAZ) beat Truong Cao Phat (VIE) 30-27; Nouredine Samir (UAE) beat Norapat Khundam (THA) RSC round 3. 71kg – Shaker Al Tekreeti (IRQ) beat Fawzi Baltagi (LBN) 30-27; Amine El Moatassime (UAE) beat Man Kongsib (THA) 29-28 81kg – Ilyass Hbibali (UAE) beat Alexandr Tsarikov (KAZ) 29-28; Khaled Tarraf (LBN) beat Mustafa Al Tekreeti (IRQ) 30-27 86kg – Ali Takaloo (IRI) beat Mohammed Al Qahtani (KSA) RSC round 1; Emil Umayev (KAZ) beat Ahmad Bahman (UAE) TKO round Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE) Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman) Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman) On sale: Now Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh132,000 (Countryman) %3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EEric%20Barbier%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EYoussef%20Hajdi%2C%20Nadia%20Benzakour%2C%20Yasser%20Drief%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%204%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A %3Cp%3E1.%20Protracted%20but%20less%20intense%20war%20(60%25%20likelihood)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E2.%20Negotiated%20end%20to%20the%20conflict%20(30%25)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E3.%20Russia%20seizes%20more%20territory%20(20%25)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E4.%20Ukraine%20pushes%20Russia%20back%20(10%25)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cem%3EForecast%20by%20Economist%20Intelligence%20Unit%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A %3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Revibe%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202022%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Hamza%20Iraqui%20and%20Abdessamad%20Ben%20Zakour%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20UAE%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Refurbished%20electronics%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunds%20raised%20so%20far%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%2410m%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFlat6Labs%2C%20Resonance%20and%20various%20others%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A Who inspires you? I am in awe of the remarkable women in the Arab region, both big and small, pushing boundaries and becoming role models for generations. Emily Nasrallah was a writer, journalist, teacher and women's rights activist How do you relax? Yoga relaxes me and helps me relieve tension, especially now when we're practically chained to laptops and desks. I enjoy learning more about music and the history of famous music bands and genres. What is favourite book? The Perks of Being a Wallflower - I think I've read it more than 7 times What is your favourite Arabic film? Hala2 Lawen (Translation: Where Do We Go Now?) by Nadine Labaki What is favourite English film? Mamma Mia Best piece of advice to someone looking for a career at Google? If you're interested in a career at Google, deep dive into the different career paths and pinpoint the space you want to join. When you know your space, you're likely to identify the skills you need to develop. MEN Cricketer of the Year – Shaheen Afridi (Pakistan) T20 Cricketer of the Year – Mohammad Rizwan (Pakistan) ODI Cricketer of the Year – Babar Azam (Pakistan) Test Cricketer of the Year – Joe Root (England) WOMEN Cricketer of the Year – Smriti Mandhana (India) ODI Cricketer of the Year – Lizelle Lee (South Africa) T20 Cricketer of the Year – Tammy Beaumont (England) Updated: March 16, 2025, 11:23 AM
