Watch the new lockdown documentary 'United Apart SA'

Documentary, which includes crowdsourced footage from the Sunday Times's United Apart campaign in 2020, is available on Showmax

29 August 2021 - 00:05 By Staff Reporter
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A gripping documentary about SA's lockdown and the effect it has had on society, the economy and the country's most vulnerable citizens can now be seen on Showmax.

In March 2020, with fewer than a handful of known infections, SA embarked on one of the strictest lockdowns in the world.

How much did our lives change? Did the authorities go too far? Can a developing economy follow the lockdown models for fiscally sound countries? What fault lines did Covid-19 expose? What more could have been done to effect change while fighting a devastating pandemic?

In March 2020, SA embarked on one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. File photo.
In March 2020, SA embarked on one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. File photo.
Image: Gallo Images/Roger Sedres

These are some of the questions discussed in United Apart SA: Lockdown Remembered.

The documentary, funded by Arena Holdings, includes footage crowdsourced for the Sunday Times #UnitedApartSA campaign, which urged South Africans last year to show how they were getting through lockdown by submitting video clips, images and voice notes that captured the essence of the pandemic.

“We are delighted to have sold United Apart to Showmax,” said Debbie McCrum, managing director for television and entertainment at Arena Holdings.

“It's an informative, moving, and entertaining investigation of what we went through as a nation during an extremely challenging year,” she said.

Produced by multi-award-winning Ochre Moving Pictures and directed by Anton Burggraaf, United Apart features South African Medical Research Council president and CEO professor Glenda Gray, clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist Prof Salim Abdool Karim, Reserve Bank deputy governor Rashad Cassim, Business Day editor Lukanyo Mnyanda, Sowetan editor Nwabisa Makunga and Sunday Times editor S'thembiso Msomi, among others.


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