Kit Zauhar: Watching People Become (Or Try To)
The Long Take Film Club with The Bioscope – May 2026
We're extending April's conversation into May, but shifting the voice.
Last month we spent an evening with Dan Sallitt — two films (Fourteen and Caterina) that established a particular way of watching people. Patient. Observational. Trusting that if you just stay with someone long enough, small gestures reveal everything you need to know about who they are.
This month: Kit Zauhar. Same aesthetic DNA. Different generation. Different questions.
Two Films, Five Years Apart
Helicopter (2016)
Zauhar's short film. Two streams of consciousness converge in a college library. It's about loneliness, the fragile possibility of connection, and hope in that strange postadolescent space where you're trying to figure out if anyone else feels as unmoored as you do.
Actual People (2021)
Her debut feature. A recent university graduate drifts through a few aimless days back home — the kind where you're supposed to have it all figured out but mostly you're avoiding phone calls, pretending last night's conversation meant something, performing confidence whilst secretly wondering if you're doing adulthood wrong.
Zauhar wrote, directed, and stars. She's not observing from outside — she's inside the drift, showing you what it actually feels like.
Why These Films Matter
There's a lineage here. Sallitt's influence is visible in Zauhar's commitment to duration, her refusal to manufacture drama, her faith that if you just watch someone move through their day honestly, you'll understand them.
But Zauhar brings something specific: an attention to the exhausting performance of having your shit together. Her characters aren't just figuring themselves out — they're managing the gap between who they think they should be and who they actually are. The performance itself becomes the subject.
It's Gen Z self-awareness turned inward. Not navel-gazing — something sharper. The recognition that you're performing, the inability to stop performing, and the loneliness of knowing everyone else is performing too.
What You'll Actually Watch
Helicopter runs about 8 minutes. It's intimate, interior, built around two people who might connect or might not. The uncertainty is the point.
Actual People is 82 minutes of low-key observation. No plot arc. No dramatic revelations. Just a person moving through days that feel suspended between what was and what's supposed to come next. If you found Sallitt's patience rewarding, you'll recognise what Zauhar's doing here.
Both films trust you to sit with ambiguity. They don't explain. They don't resolve. They show you people trying to become something and leave you to figure out whether they're succeeding.
The Practical Details
Wednesday 27 May 2026, 18:30
The Bioscope Independent Cinema
44 Stanley Avenue, Milpark, Johannesburg
Tickets available on The Bioscope website: www.thebioscope.co.za
This is a Long Take Film Club screening — free membership via our WhatsApp Broadcast Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbCA8n1CBtxBgDh6vg1F
Pizza and beers in the courtyard after. The post-screening conversations have become as valuable as the films themselves — people actually talking through what they've watched, testing interpretations, arguing about whether a moment meant what they think it meant.
Why We're Doing This
April and May form a deliberate arc: Sallitt establishes the aesthetic, Zauhar shows what a younger filmmaker does with similar tools in a different emotional landscape.
We're not just screening films. We're building a community of people in Johannesburg who care about cinema that trusts its audience, who want to engage with work that doesn't pander, who understand that sometimes the most radical thing a film can do is just watch someone honestly.
If that sounds like you, come through. If you know someone who'd value this, share this with them.
Growing a community needs a village. We're building ours one screening at a time.
Ag shem, who else is paying attention to filmmakers like this?
The Long Take Film Club is a monthly film screening series presented in partnership with The Bioscope Independent Cinema, curated by House of Shem and Deniz Sertkol. Free membership. Tickets per screening.
