At a time when Zimbabwean cinema is hungry for global visibility, Rise does more than hold its own; it signals a cinematic future worth watching.
By Joseph Jonathan
There’s a particular kind of film that doesn’t announce itself with spectacle but settles into you quietly, working its way past resistance until you realise you’ve been holding your breath. Jessica J. Rowlands’ Rise is that kind of film—a work that understands that emotional force doesn’t come from size but from clarity of purpose.
What she offers here isn’t just a portrait of a boy named Rise (played with astonishing instinct by Sikhanyiso Ngwenya) and a withdrawn boxing coach, Tobias (Tongayi Chirisa), but a meditation on how young people claw their way toward dignity in environments that often deny them the chance to imagine futures.
Set in Victoria Falls and filmed entirely in Zimbabwe, the story draws from the life of real boxing coach Tobias Mupfuti, who has long used sport as a lifeline for vulnerable children. But Rowlands is not content with docu-drama imitation; she crafts a narrative that sits between realism and fable, where every bruise and every moment of hesitation carries the weight of a larger, lived reality.
Her Zimbabwe is neither exoticised nor flattened. It’s a place of contradictions: dusty township streets cracking open under a relentless sun, yet bursting with colour, rhythm, and a sense of community that asserts itself even in struggle. It’s this layered depiction that gives the story its cultural spine: a recognition of how Zimbabwean children, especially those from abandoned or impoverished roots, are carried not just by individuals but by the fragile strength of the communities that notice them.
Rise, introduced in the film’s brutal opening scene where the camera stays close to his battered, barefoot frame as he is surrounded by violence, is a child who has learned to expect little. Yet, Ngwenya’s performance is startlingly intuitive—so present, so emotionally unvarnished—that his pain never feels symbolic. It feels personal. And perhaps that’s what makes his transformation, and the unlikely mentorship he finds in Tobias, so deeply felt. Tobias insists he doesn’t know the boy, but Rise insists on naming him “Coach.” This small act of defiance—a child choosing the adult he wants to believe in—opens up the film’s emotional terrain.
Rowlands stages their dynamic with a kind of narrative restraint. She’s not interested in loud sentiment or monologues about broken systems; she lets the silences speak. Tobias, played with quiet internal conflict by Chirisa, carries the contradiction of a man who has learned to survive by withdrawing, yet is moved back into purpose by a boy who simply refuses to stop asking for care. It’s a delicate chemistry, fractured, uneven, but sincere. Rise understands mentorship not as an easy trope, but as a negotiation between two wounded people trying to build something resembling trust.
If Rise feels so emotionally persuasive, it’s in large part due to its technical precision. Jacques Naudé’s cinematography gives the film its signature language: intimate close-ups during moments of vulnerability, patient wides that let the Zimbabwean landscape breathe, and kinetic camera movement during the fight sequences.
The way Naudé’s camera follows the body—first as Rise is beaten, later as he finds his rhythm in the ring—is more than choreography; it’s a physical expression of how a child learns to occupy space again. The boxing scenes are beautifully constructed, capturing both the brutality and the elegance of the sport. Zimbabwe’s colours—rust reds, deep greens, sun-drenched yellows—aren’t just aesthetic choices; they are emotional accents to a story that is, at its core, about reclaiming agency.
Max Uldahl’s sound design and the film’s use of local music add another layer of cultural resonance. The score never overwhelms; it pulses, flickers, and recedes, allowing the ambient textures of the environment to dominate. It’s a reminder that sound, like space, can act as a memory. Even the film’s one dream sequence, where Rise imagines what strength might feel like, is handled with an understated grace that resists the temptation to turn hope into spectacle.
But the film isn’t perfect. Chirisa’s performance—otherwise grounded and emotionally coherent—is occasionally undermined by an accent that leans more towards the generic pan-African cadence shaped by years in the American film ecosystem. It’s not jarring enough to break the film, but it does momentarily pull you out of an otherwise immersive cultural environment. Still, the strength of the performances around him, especially Ngwenya’s raw brilliance, keeps the emotional core intact.
Thematically, Rise speaks to something larger than mentorship or boxing. It asks what becomes of children who grow up with no system designed to catch them. It interrogates the role of community-based interventions in postcolonial African societies where institutions have failed, but individuals—teachers, coaches, neighbours—quietly become the scaffolding that keeps young people from falling through the cracks. And it suggests, with a soft but steady conviction, that facing the things we fear—be it abandonment, failure, or our own history—is the first step toward freedom.
What makes Rise linger is not triumph in the ring, though the final match is shot with a triumphant, near-poetic rhythm. It’s the quieter truth the film holds close: that sometimes, survival looks like a boy insisting on being seen, and a man finally choosing to see him. At a time when Zimbabwean cinema is hungry for global visibility, Rise does more than hold its own, it signals a cinematic future worth watching. If this is what the next generation of Zimbabwean filmmakers is capable of, then the door Rowlands and her team have opened is not just an opportunity; it’s a beginning.
Rating: 4/5
*Rise made history as the first Zimbabwean film to première at the Tribeca Film Festival (2025) and screened at the Eastern Nigeria International Film Festival (ENIFF) 2025, where it won the award for Best Narrative Short.
Joseph Jonathan is a historian who seeks to understand how film shapes our cultural identity as a people. He believes that history is more about the future than the past. When he’s not writing about film, you can catch him listening to music or discussing politics. He tweets @Chukwu2big.