‘TUTU’ reveals the furious, funny man behind the global icon

For many people around the world, Desmond Tutu exists more as a symbol than a person: the smiling archbishop in purple robes, laughing loudly, dancing lightly and speaking about forgiveness while South Africa tore itself apart around him. But TUTU, the new documentary premiering at the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival this June, reminds audiences that behind the global icon was a fiercely courageous, politically uncompromising and deeply human man. Directed by Sam Pollard and produced by Johnny Webb, the film traces Tutu’s journey from childhood poverty to international moral authority, while also revealing the warmth, humour and private family life that made him such an extraordinary, charming and compelling figure.

Luckily, the film rescues Tutu from sainthood long enough to remind audiences what made him extraordinary in the first place: he was funny. He was furious. He was politically fearless. He adored his wife. He danced in public. He laughed at himself. He was deeply, stubbornly hopeful at moments when hope looked indistinguishable from delusion – and yet it was essential to keep many in this country alive.

And perhaps best of all, he remained morally uncompromising without becoming morally unbearable. In fact, at the risk of sounding patronising, he was adorable – a feat few public figures manage.

The documentary draws heavily on almost twenty years of footage captured by filmmakers Roger Friedman and Benny Gool, who followed Tutu through the later years of his life. The result is a long, patient immersion into the rhythms of a marriage, a family and a moral consciousness. We see Tutu as we know him delivering speeches and receiving accolades, but we also watch him teasing Leah in the kitchen, collapsing into exhaustion, preparing sermons, comforting strangers and wrestling privately with the emotional toll of being South African history’s designated conscience.

Webb describes discovering the archive as “an electric moment”. Faced with what he estimates was nearly a thousand hours of footage, the production team slowly realised they possessed something rare: not simply historical documentation, but emotional access.

“It took us probably six months to understand exactly what we had,” Webb says. “What makes the film so unique is the intimacy.”

That intimacy becomes the documentary’s greatest strength. Many South Africans already know the public mythology: the Nobel Peace Prize, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the moral leadership during apartheid while Nelson Mandela remained imprisoned. What TUTU offers instead is the texture beneath the mythology. The private man beneath the global iconography.

Pollard, whose previous documentaries explored figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Sammy Davis Jr. and playwright August Wilson, says he was immediately drawn to Tutu as “an important revolutionary figure”, but emerged most struck by his humanity.

“The people close to him knew he was essentially a very wonderful and decent human being,” Pollard says. “And the importance of his relationship with Leah — exactly the connection they had, the intimacy they had — became one of the most beautiful parts of the story.”

One of the documentary’s unexpected truths is that TUTU is, essentially, a love story. Not a romcom, that would cheapen what Leah and Desmond shared: decades of mutual dependence, intellectual partnership and emotional ballast. Leah Tutu is cast as the supportive wife orbiting a famous man, but it’s also clear that she forms the steel framework holding the entire structure upright. The film gradually makes clear that Tutu’s public courage was inseparable from the private stability she provided.

This emotional dimension prevents the documentary from collapsing under the weight of its own reverence. Sanctified figures often become cinematically inert or, quite frankly, boring. But TUTU, though celebratory and reverent, allows the Archbishop plenty of warmth, contradiction and even occasional irritation.

The film also explores, as Pollard points out, Tutu’s ferocity often unseen or not remembered by the public, overshadowed as it was by his lightness and balance. Contemporary audiences, especially younger viewers, will remember him as the smiling elderly archbishop dancing through church aisles in purple robes but the documentary reminds us that he could also be terrifyingly direct. During the height of apartheid, he publicly condemned Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as “child murderers” for opposing sanctions against South Africa. He confronted power with an honest fury sharpened by moral certainty rather than political calculation.

Webb admits this period surprised him most during production. “The fierceness that he brought to that process as such a gentle man was impressive,” he says.

The duality — gentleness alongside ferocity — becomes one of the film’s central fascinations. Tutu’s humour wasn’t innate. It was strategic. Pollard says, “Tutu used humour to disarm audiences while simultaneously delivering devastating political truths. His laughter functioned as both invitation and weapon.”

Watching the documentary now, in 2026, produces a slightly uncomfortable awareness of how absent figures like Tutu have become from global public life. Contemporary politics rewards outrage, tribalism and ideological performance. Nuance is suspicious and punished for possibly being weak. Forgiveness is also often treated as weakness, as dialogue with opponents is framed as betrayal.

Tutu rejected that. A devastating moment in the film revisits his philosophy regarding enemies and reconciliation. Webb says Tutu insisted that peace isn’t achieved by speaking only to your allies. “If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies.”

The film comes timeously in an era of global fracture: wars, political extremism, rising authoritarianism and social media ecosystems engineered almost entirely around perpetual fury, indignation and pitting people against each other. The documentary, conversely, highlights Tutu’s insistence on shared humanity, understanding and, importantly, conversations that move us forward instead of constantly focusing on the mistakes of the past.

Webb says that realisation became one of the film’s driving motivations. “We need his voice back,” he says.

The documentary also grapples with the complicated legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For many South Africans, the TRC remains emotionally unresolved terrain — admired internationally while viewed domestically with more ambivalence. The film explores Tutu’s understanding of forgiveness not as passive absolution, but as liberation from perpetual trauma. After all, we cannot change the past, he says, but we can learn from it.

Webb says he found this part of the Archbishop’s philosophy profoundly moving while researching Tutu’s writings. “He spoke about forgiveness not just releasing the perpetrator, but releasing the survivor from their own story.”

But despite the darkness embedded in South African history — apartheid violence, state brutality, systemic humiliation — the film remains remarkably uplifting. Tutu himself stubbornly refused despair, his perpetual upbeatness, a kind of emotional discipline.

The film opens with Tutu calmly insisting apartheid would end long before its collapse seemed plausible to many in this country. He simply believed injustice could not sustain itself indefinitely. Watching those scenes now, we understand how psychologically necessary figures like him became during hopeless periods of history. He taught other people the courage to continue.

Pollard believes younger audiences especially need exposure to figures of that magnitude. “If you believe strongly enough, things can change,” he says. “You need to stay positive,” and TUTU makes a persuasive argument that cynicism isn’t intelligence, it’s often just exhaustion and the inability to envision a better way forward.

The documentary’s greatest achievement is the way it explores Tutu’s moral seriousness without ever becoming self-righteous, which allows audiences to feel inspired without manipulation. It presents his “goodness” not as bland, inherent perfection, but as active, difficult labour.

Maybe that’s why TUTU feels so unexpectedly emotional – because it reminds us how rare certain human qualities have become. We still recognise greatness – even some of the most abominable figures in history had that – but moral courage, generosity, humility, grace under pressure, lightness of being, the willingness to keep speaking to people you disagree with, the refusal to surrender optimism, the belief in the positive elements of human nature, respect for all peoples – these and many others are qualities the Arch had in spades.

For nearly two hours, the film proposes the possibility that modern politics and polemics increasingly discourage: that kindness and strength aren’t opposites; that gentleness can alter history; that laughter may sometimes carry more revolutionary force than rage.

For all its great and enjoyable moments, TUTU ultimately leaves viewers with a painful awareness of absence – the absence created by the death of this politically and historically inspiring man, but also the absence of his particular moral vocabulary from contemporary public life. Watching him now feels like hearing a language humanity once spoke more fluently but is quickly forgetting. The filmmakers have created a piece of art to remind us. While Webb speaks of needing “his voice back”, Pollard puts it even more simply: “His humanity was something that just seeped out of every pore.”

• TUTU is screening at the Encounters Film Festival in June. For information about dates, times and locations, click here