MEET LUTHANDO MZIMKULU (Esihle Ndleleni). She’s pretty and stable. She’s hardworking and reliable and gets all the top academic prizes. She’s a good girl as far as the establishment of AGS, a South African private school, can judge, and most of all, she’s black. She’s deemed the school’s poster girl, and becomes its marketing punt with her smiling face plastered on posters in the school and out. But there’s more to Luthando than even her mother (Faniswa Yisa) believes. This is Black Burns Fast, a brand new local film written and directed by Sandulela Asanda, and currently on circuit.

And while the story of the work follows the basic trajectory of a hero’s journey to overall emotional and soulful victory, having weathered a number of devastating challenges, it’s a tale told with skill, sass and energy, with cheekiness and delicious bravado offering up the quandary of being gay and black in a heavily privileged all girls private school. Luthando’s mum is a single parent. Luthando’s not at this school lightly: it’s all based on her academic smarts. She’s a celebrated gem in the academic cohort and no one’s gonna let her forget that!

Of course, there are more complicated smarts than just the bookish ones, that we also all need as teenagers to keep us abreast of the world that is unfolding to us. One fine day in the middle of the term, Ayanda (Muadi Ilung) is introduced to the class. A newbie. She was expelled from an equally privileged school. She’s a child of much money and serially absent parents. She has savvy and rules, in her book, are non-issues. Luthando and Ayanda make eye contact and the sparks are in the ether.

So, all the elements are in place in this tale: the comical teachers at pains to keep their charges in moral and academic and disciplinary line; the A team who are basically pretty bitches, until they’re aren’t; a strata of bland, judgemental white girls; and our heroines. This frames Luthando and her best friend Jodie (Mila Smith) in the general rankings of the classroom. Boys feature – there’s a brother school to AGS across the road and they share some classes and are useful as counterparts to the school dance. They’re also useful as narrative foils.

The horror of discovering that you may not be like all the other girls in your sexual ‘norms’, is dealt with, with a cynical humour and a realness that is both moving and infectious and you’re on Luthando’s side from the get-go. The narrative seems to be told in the first person: She’s our Luthando and the injustices inflicted upon here are ones we take to heart.

Throw in the mix a bit of skulduggery and manipulation, a bit of naughty cell phone footage which goes viral and some canoodling in the locker room and you have your perfect private school storm which doesn’t punish the child who films the indiscretions, but gasps in horror at the indiscretions themselves, reflecting on What Will People Think? It’s a denouement which collapses all the happy political correctness and celebration of Luthando in a racist and homophobic game of power.

While narratively predictable, the film has so much heart and delicious asides and so many beautiful young new performers you have to indulge in it, and embrace your inner sixteen- or seventeen year old with an understanding of the things that really matter. Of the ilk of tales like Alwarabi School for Girls, Derry Girls and the Spud books and films by John van de Ruit, Black Burns Fast is a gorgeous filmic immersion that will make you love, laugh and cry with teenaged abandon.

• Black Burns Fast is written and directed by Sandulela Asanda and performed by a cast headed by Roxanne Gabriel Botman, Ntsimedi Gwangwa, Muadi Ilung, Khensani Khoza, Basetsana Motloung, Esihle Ndleleni, Catherine Saint Jude Pretorius, Mila Smith, Faniswa Yisa and Rob van Vuuren. Produced by Cait Pansegrouw and Elias Ribeiro it features creative input by Tirath Bhoola (production design), Pierre de Villiers (cinematography, Talya Jay Kahan (editing), and released nationally in film theatres on 31 July 2026.