A South African township is vibrantly resilient despite the scars of apartheid

Welcome to Lavender Hill, a makeshift township in Cape Town’s Cape Flats region populated by non-whites who were forcibly relocated under apartheid. With help from a local tour guide, the British filmmaker Rachel Close wanders among the diverse, intertwined group of hairdressers, small-time gangsters, musicians, preachers, and idealistic young people who call the township home. In her honest and humanising documentary, Close depicts the community and its residents as representative of a resilient, hopeful South Africa that’s still perpetually confronted by the scars of its past.