6 Films & TV Shows Set In Botswana During The 20th Century

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  A United Kingdom

  England 🇧🇼 Botswana The 1950s The 1940s

  The true story of a love that shook an empire — The inspiring true story of Seretse Khama, the King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments. Seretse and Ruth defied family, Apartheid and empire - their love triumphed over every obstacle flung in their path and in so doing they transformed their nation and inspired the world.

  Released in 2016 • 111 minutes
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  The Gods Must Be Crazy II

  🇧🇼 Botswana 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980s

  This Time, Everybody's Going Crazier. — Xixo is back again. This time, his children accidentally stow away on a fast-moving poachers' truck, unable to get off, and Xixo sets out to rescue them. Along the way, he encounters a couple of soldiers trying to capture each other and a pilot and passenger of a small plane, who are each having a few problems of their own.

  Released in 1989 • 98 minutes
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  Cry Freedom

  🇧🇼 Botswana 🇱🇸 Lesotho 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1970s

  A dramatic story, based on actual events, about the friendship between two men struggling against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. Donald Woods is a white liberal journalist in South Africa who begins to follow the activities of Stephen Biko, a courageous and outspoken black anti-apartheid activist.

  Released in 1987 • 157 minutes
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  The Gods Must Be Crazy

  🇧🇼 Botswana 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1980s

  The critics are raving... the natives are restless... and the laughter is non-stop! — A Coca-Cola bottle dropped from an airplane raises havoc among a normally peaceful tribe of African bushmen who believe it to be a utensil of the gods.

  Released in 1980 • 109 minutes
• N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman

  🇧🇼 Botswana The 1970s

  This film provides a broad overview of Ju/'hoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a Ju/'hoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties. N!ai tells her own story, and in so doing, the story of Ju/'hoan life over a thirty year period. "Before the white people came we did what we wanted," N!ai recalls, describing the life she remembers as a child: following her mother to pick berries, roots, and nuts as the season changed; the division of giraffe meat; the kinds of rain; her resistance to her marriage to /Gunda at the age of eight; and her changing feelings about her husband when he becomes a healer. As N!ai speaks, the film presents scenes from the 1950's that show her as a young girl and a young wife. The uniqueness of N!ai may lie in its tight integration of ethnography and history. While it portrays the changes in Ju/'hoan society over thirty years, it never loses sight of the individual, N!ai.

  Released in 1980 • 59 minutes
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  The Wilby Conspiracy

  🇧🇼 Botswana 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1970s

  In the fight for freedom, you have to break all the rules. — Having spent 10 years in prison for nationalist activities, Shack Twala is finally ordered released by the South African Supreme Court but he finds himself almost immediately on the run after a run-in with the police. Assisted by his lawyer Rina Van Niekirk and visiting British engineer Jim Keogh, he heads for Capetown where he hopes to recover a stash of diamonds, meant to finance revolutionary activities, that he had entrusted to a dentist before his incarceration. Along the way, they are followed by Major Horn of the South African State security bureau and it becomes apparent that he has no intention of arresting them until they reach their final destination

  Released in 1975 • 105 minutes