With his fourth feature, director Jahmil XT Qubeka continues to prove that he's the most cinematically innovative and envelope-pushing of present-day South African filmmakers. After the poetic period drama Sew the Winter to my Skin, Qubeka's latest film, Knuckle City, is very much a present-day, gritty examination of the legacy of toxic masculinities in the cutthroat environment of the Eastern Cape's legendary boxing world of Mdantsane.
The township holds mythical status as SA's boxing capital, but as we soon realise through the story of fictional anti-hero Dudu Nyakama (Bongile Mantsai). It's also an oppressive space of poverty, violence and social upheaval. Dudu is an aging boxer who finds himself stuck with the consequences of his womanising and entitlement, unable to get a low-level card fight and useful only for the training he can offer to younger, hungrier and more talented newcomers.
He and his brother Duke (Thembikile Komani) are the disappointing legacy of his legendary gangster father Art (Zolisa Xaluva) in the eyes of their family and the community at large. Weaving between the present and the past, Qubeka presents Dudu's story as a complex one that is tainted by the brutality of his father and the sins that his behaviour has wrought on his sons. As Duke gets ready to walk out of jail, threatening to jeopardise his brother's final chance for boxing success, the two men and the families they've neglected are thrown into a pressure cooker moment that will either end them or force them to deal with their darkest demons and become the kind of men they can be proud of.
It's a tried and tested dramatic device within the boxing film genre but thanks to Qubeka's smart use of cinematography, music and an ability to extract big but emotionally authentic performances from his cast, it feels fresh here. Bigger and important themes around masculinity and the treatment of women also give the film a powerful and timely undercurrent that doesn't distract but rather enriches the narrative.
Knuckle City is a smart, empathetic and engaging piece of work that feels intensely South African while also raising universal and necessary questions about men, the performance of masculinity and the consequences of this for the relationships between men and women, men and other men and broader society as a whole.
• Knuckle City is on circuit
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