South Africa has no shortage of stories about queer pain. Black Burns Fast dares to ask a different question: what if a Black queer girl’s story could also be awkward, funny, romantic and, above all, joyful?
As a bisexual woman, there were moments watching Black Burns Fast where I wasn’t simply following Luthando’s journey. I was remembering my own.
Not because my story mirrored hers exactly. It didn’t.
But because the uncertainty, the stolen glances, the constant calculation of what parts of yourself are safe to reveal and to whom, felt achingly familiar.
For decades, queer cinema has often asked LGBTQ+ audiences to brace themselves. Someone dies. Someone is beaten. Someone is rejected. Someone never gets to be themselves.
Those stories matter because they reflect painful realities.
But they cannot be the only stories we tell.
That’s why Black Burns Fast feels so refreshing.
Writer and director Sandulela Asanda has described the film as “a love letter” to her younger self, created to fill the silence that surrounded her own experience growing up queer in an all-girls’ school. She deliberately set out to make a coming-of-age film that wasn’t defined by trauma, but by discovery, awkwardness and joy. That intention radiates through every frame.
More butterflies than bruises
Luthando isn’t introduced as a victim.
She’s a bookish, scholarship student trying to survive life inside an elite girls’ boarding school where fitting in often feels like another subject to pass. When Ayanda arrives, the careful order of Luthando’s life begins to unravel as she experiences her first real attraction to another girl.
It’s a premise that could easily have become another bleak coming-out drama.
Instead, the film leans into all the glorious awkwardness of first love.
The nervous excitement.
The overthinking.
The fantasy.
The embarrassing mistakes.
The intoxicating feeling that one person can suddenly change your entire universe.
For many bisexual women, there is something deeply recognisable about that confusion. The moment you realise your feelings don’t fit the script you’ve spent years trying to follow.
Black Burns Fast captures that emotional chaos without making queerness itself feel like a burden.
Black queer girls deserve softness too
One of the film’s greatest achievements is simply allowing Black queer girls to exist beyond suffering.
South African audiences have seen too many headlines about violence against LGBTQ+ people. We have become accustomed to narratives where Black queer lives are framed primarily through danger.
Asanda wanted to change that.
She has spoken about how few films centred Black queer girls while she was growing up, and how the few stories that did exist were often rooted in violence or tragedy. Black Burns Fast instead offers a romance that is “tender, awkward, joyful and messy”, reflecting the reality of adolescence rather than reducing queer identity to hardship.
That choice matters.
Representation isn’t only about visibility.
It’s about possibility.
Young queer people deserve to imagine futures where happiness is just as believable as heartbreak.
Friendship steals the show
As much as this is a love story, it’s also a story about friendship.
The girls surrounding Luthando don’t feel like background characters filling space until the next romance.
Each represents a different version of teenage girlhood, carrying her own insecurities, pressures and expectations. Asanda has said she wanted every member of Luthando’s friendship circle to reflect another aspect of growing up as a young woman, from body image to sexual pressure to loyal friendship.
That emotional richness gives the film weight.
Because when first love inevitably becomes complicated, it is friendship that reminds Luthando who she is.
For me, that landed even harder than the romance.
A visual identity all its own
The trailer hints at a visual style that’s unusually playful for South African cinema.
Bright colours.
Fantasy sequences.
Video game flourishes.
Moments where imagination spills into reality.
According to the filmmakers, this wasn’t simply an aesthetic decision. They wanted to create a distinctly youthful cinematic language that reflects Luthando’s inner world while embracing Gen Z energy and the heightened emotions of adolescence.
It makes Black Burns Fast feel unlike almost anything currently being made locally.
Instead of imitating American teen movies, it confidently creates its own visual vocabulary while remaining unmistakably South African.
Why this film matters
Growing up bisexual often meant never quite seeing yourself reflected on screen.
If there were queer women, they were almost always lesbian.
If there were bisexual characters, they were frequently portrayed as confused, untrustworthy or simply passing through a phase.
Watching Luthando navigate attraction, fear and identity reminded me how desperately young people need stories that don’t insist on perfect certainty.
Identity doesn’t always arrive fully formed.
Sometimes it unfolds slowly.
Sometimes it changes.
Sometimes it simply asks for the freedom to exist without immediate labels or judgement.
Whether viewers identify as lesbian, bisexual, queer, questioning or straight, Black Burns Fast understands something fundamental.
Every teenager wants to be seen.
Every teenager wants to belong.
And every teenager deserves the chance to discover themselves without shame.
Final verdict
Black Burns Fast doesn’t pretend that coming out is easy, nor does it ignore the realities of conservative families or schools.
What it refuses to do is surrender joy.
That’s its quiet act of rebellion.
For queer audiences, especially Black queer women, this film offers something that has been missing from South African screens for far too long: permission to remember first love with a smile instead of a scar.
And sometimes, that’s exactly the kind of revolution cinema needs.
Black Burns Fast opened in South African cinemas on 31 July. View the trailer below.
