Scenes from a Dry City
2018 · 13m · South Africa
Directed by Simon Wood, François Verster
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, provocative
As Cape Town faces the prospect of 'Day Zero,' when the city's taps run dry, the film observes the water crisis from contrasting perspectives — illegal car washers, anti-privatization protesters, worshippers praying for rain, and golfers on lush courses — exposing the racial and economic fault lines beneath the drought.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's making climate docs now, but this one refuses the easy outrage—instead it just *holds* the contradiction, lets the golfers water their greens while the city dies of thirst, and trusts you to feel the obscenity without being lectured. It's the anti-sermon I didn't know I needed.
Wood and Verster situate this firmly in the essay-film tradition—measured, formally rigorous, with the kind of structural sophistication (parallel vignettes, tonal restraint, cumulative moral weight) that echoes Harun Farocki or the Berkeleys. The craft is in what's *not* said.
The singular move here is the refusal to score or narrate the juxtaposition—just cut between the car washers and the golfers, let the silence sit, and suddenly the entire economic system becomes visible in negative space. That editorial restraint does the work of a hundred explanatory sentences.
Festivals
- Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2019, Mini-Doc Award
- International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2018, World Premiere