Lebohang Moeketsi's River Memory took Best Documentary at the eighth edition of Inte Cinema Festival — a patient, trusting portrait of a South African community and the river that shapes its life and its remembering. We spoke with the director about time, trust, and what recognition in Rome meant for a film made far from it.
Where did River Memory begin?
With the river itself, honestly, before there was any film. I grew up near it. I understood from childhood that the river was not only water — it was where the community kept its memory, its stories, its dead, its arguments. I carried that for years before I had any means to film it. When I finally did, the challenge was not finding the subject. It was earning the right to film something I already knew was sacred.
The film feels deeply trusted by the people in it. How did you get there?
Slowly, which is the only way. I did not arrive with a camera. I arrived, and then I kept arriving, for a long time, with no camera at all. Documentary made quickly is almost always documentary made at someone's expense — you extract the story and leave. I did not want to extract. I wanted the community to recognise the film as theirs when they eventually saw it. That takes time you cannot shortcut, and it is time festivals and funders do not always understand you needing.
Documentary made quickly is almost always made at someone's expense. I did not want to extract. I wanted the community to recognise the film as theirs.Lebohang Moeketsi
What did it mean to have the film recognised in Rome, so far from where it was made?
More than I can easily say. There is a fear, making a film this local, this rooted in one river and one community, that it will not travel — that people elsewhere will see it as a curiosity, something regional. Rome answered that fear. An audience with no connection to that river understood what the river meant. The specific became universal in that room, which is the thing every documentary maker hopes for and few get to witness directly.
You have spoken before about the barriers filmmakers like you face. Can you say more?
Yes, because it is real and it is rarely discussed honestly. The hardest barrier is not making the film — it is being seen at all. For a filmmaker based in South Africa, the festival world can feel like a room you are not quite invited into. You send work out and it disappears; you rarely learn whether anyone even watched. Many of us have extraordinary films that simply never found a programmer willing to give them real attention. That silence is its own kind of wall.
So being genuinely considered changes the calculation.
It changes it entirely. When a festival actually watches your film and weighs it on its own terms, the question becomes simply: does the film belong here? Not, will anyone from that world ever look at something from mine? That distinction is everything. It is the difference between a festival that is open in principle and one that is open in fact. I sent River Memory not expecting much, and it was met by people who watched closely and took it seriously. That is how it should work everywhere. It does not, often enough.
What did the post-screening conversation give you?
Perspective I could not have gotten at home, where everyone already knows the river. In Rome, people asked the questions only an outsider asks — and those questions showed me what the film was carrying that I had stopped being able to see. One person spoke about memory and water in a way that I think will shape whatever I make next. That is the gift of showing a local film to a distant, serious audience.
What are you working on now?
Another documentary, again close to home, again slow. Rome gave me the confidence that slow, rooted, trusting work has a place in the world beyond the place it is about. I am grateful for that, and grateful the door was open enough for me to walk through.
Submissions for the 9th Edition of Inte Cinema Festival are open now on FilmFreeway.
Inte Cinema Festival is an independent short film festival and cultural association based in Rome. Submissions for the 9th Edition are open now on FilmFreeway.