Mother City

Mother City is a simultaneously heart-breaking and inspiring story about the profoundly personal and political struggle for land and housing in Cape Town, South Africa. Following the story of the Reclaim the City movement, supported by activists and lawyers, the film reveals the complexities and devastation of spatial inequality and the commodification of land and housing in the city.

Mother City masterfully showcases the power of people to resist spatial apartheid and imagine and build a more just urban landscape through novel, impactful strategies. Against the backdrop of a country celebrating three decades of democracy, Mother City exposes one of South Africa’s most urgent societal, legal and political issues: Land. Exposing the deep fault lines that still exist in South Africa because successive governments since 1994 have not offered solutions to the urgent issue of land and housing, rendering generations of working-class people homeless, this film charts a defiant war against government and property developers in a city still disfigured by spatial apartheid.

This national tour of Grenfell is being coordinated by Tate in collaboration with the partner venues and is made possible thanks to support using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and from Art Fund. Each presentation will be free to visit and will be accompanied by a public engagement programme of talks, workshops and community events supported by the Grenfell Foundation.

Supported by:

With thanks to our funders: