Al Wat Ek Weet: a Cape Town film tells teenage boys it is fine to feel
Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs adapt Marita van der Vyver's novel about grief, heritage and first love.
Cape Town — Al Wat Ek Weet, a new South African film, follows 17-year-old Gabriel Lombard as he deals with grief after a death in the family, a first romance and questions about his own heritage.
It is adapted from Marita van der Vyver's young adult novel and written and directed by Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs, the duo behind South Africa's official international feature submission to the 99th Academy Awards.
Cape Town is shot in a warm, playful light, from a first-love montage through galleries, a pizza place and the city's well-loved independent cinema to a minibus taxi that takes off into the sky. Gabriel's bottled-up grief appears as a four-piece brass band in the glittering suits of the Kaapse Klopse, popping up in a kitchen cabinet, behind a shower curtain and chasing him through the streets.
Through poetry, Gabriel learns to trust his own voice and to listen. Daily Maverick's reviewer says the film opens more threads than it can tie up, but finds its strongest message in encouraging young men to speak about their feelings before silence does deeper harm.
Source: Daily Maverick, 28 October 2026.
