BFI Flare 2026 – Interview with Director Sandulela Asanda (Black Burns Fast)

Sandulela Asanda is on top of the world right now. The South African writer and director has been on festival run at Berlinale, having seen her new film Black Burns Fast screened for audiences recently. Days before that adventure, her feature was announced as the closing night film of BFI Flare 2026. There’s a pride and honour she feels with that recognition. Not only will her film be part of BFI Flare’s 40th anniversary celebrations, but in reaching new heights, African sexuality will take centre stage for a global audience. From one Black nerd to another, “everything is coming up Millhouse.”

After watching her film, it’s not hard to see why. Black Burns Fast tells the story of Luthando (Esihle Ndleleni), a studious high schooler and poster child of Black excellence who navigates the trials and tribulations of diversity, race, social anxieties and the illuminati (as depicted in one hilarious scene where holy water is tossed on her face whilst holding the bible). The realms of film and TV are no stranger to such stories: Mean Girls, Sex Education and Easy A have defined the cultural zeitgeist with their quirky humour and social relatability. The difference here comes from how Fast’s coming-of-age tale is explored through a Black queer-lens, a teenager coming to terms with their own sexual awakening, those feelings unleashed by the arrival of new student Ayanda (Muadi Ilung). 

It’s a bold film unafraid of making a statement, designed to raise smiles through its fourth-wall breaks, eccentric teachers and gamer graphics straight out of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Such joyousness is part of the Afrobubblegum movement, pioneered by Wanuri Kahiu’s 2018 film Rafiki, where fun, joy and happiness are at the centre of showcasing a different Africa. Certainly for Asanda, it’s the key reason why Black Burns Fast exists: “So much of queer cinema – a lot of stories are about trauma, and they’re sad and they’re scary, and I didn’t want to make that,” she cites in our 15-minute Zoom conversation. “Being queer has really been a great happiness in my life, and I wanted to make a piece that reflected that happiness and encourages people to seek the truth within themselves.”

To the film’s unapologetic credit, it has a lot of fun doing so whilst accurately capturing those relatable teenage emotions, angst and swings. For the writer and director, getting her film to the screen was a challenge. “That blank page of Final Draft is like a hellscape!” she says. “But I think once I finally got done with the script, and we got into casting, production and the edit, then I was like, ‘Okay, this is fun again.’” She has been on a five year journey to craft her movie, based on the short film Mirror Mirror, which also screened at Berlinale in 2022. 

Asanda is the first-generation creative in her family, a passion that started at an early age when she started acting at eight years old. But she never considered it to be a career path. As many Africans can culturally attest to, parents would encourage their children to pursue traditional jobs such as doctors, or, in Asanda’s case, following in the footsteps of her lawyer uncle. A creative life wasn’t considered attainable until her drama teacher encouraged her to apply for an acting programme, a move which initially didn’t go over well with her parents. “When I got into university, I did Economics and Law, and at the same time, I still needed my creative outlet. So I was acting in and writing plays as well. Once I graduated with my degrees, my mom was just like, ‘Okay, well, you can do whatever you want now.’ And I was like, ‘Well, when you say that…’”, laughing at the memory. “It really was like a switch unlocked in my brain, and it was like, ‘Yeah, you can do whatever you want.’” 

You can sense Asanda’s joy in finding her creative freedom and voice, citing films like Pariah (2011), Scott Pilgrim, and The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995) as influences for her feature-length film. Artists such as Hemlock Springs and Michel Gondry also played a key role in crafting her own distinct directorial style. Fast’s playfulness allows audiences to jump inside Luthando’s mind, be it asking for aliens to abduct her during a school assembly, cardboard love hearts appearing when she falls head over heels seeing Ayanda for the first time, or deciding which “Luthando” she should present herself to Ayanda, displayed like a character selection on an 8-bit video game. Such moments were key for the director to showcase an internalised world of young Black girls, which remains a rare depiction, especially when they are “shy, nerdy and sheltered”.

It naturally prompted questions about the director’s own school life. What was she like in navigating her own journey? “The school space [that we see in the film] was my school space, from the beginning of high school to the end,” she says. “I was very outgoing. I was very ambitious. I wanted to be the best in everything. I was the chess captain at one point. I always spent my breaks in the library looking for new books and became friends with the librarian. I was very outspoken, especially if things looked wrong or if I didn’t agree with things. I also played sports. I did drama. I did a bit of everything. But I classify myself as a nerd who can be extroverted sometimes.”

It’s hard not to see the parallels between Asanda and her on-screen counterpart Luthando. The writer/director and Ndleleni’s performance radiate the same hard-working ethos for excellence, but also the “otherness” of being at school. As Luthando begins opening herself up to new experiences and her love for Ayanda, so do the vulnerabilities and pressures of being accepted within the status quo, including dating boys. In one scene, girls hooking up with boys (and vice versa) are treated like a town crier making a formal announcement in the dinner halls, with a bell rung in celebration. But in looking back at her youth, it made Asanda come to terms with her own thoughts and feelings when she realised she was queer: “I tried to force myself to get into that, because so much of social life revolves around boys unfortunately, even at an all-girls high school, but it was never with a full and open heart.” 

Talking with friends to corroborate her self-conscious feelings helped with the production. It also allowed her to find moments of humour and levity, which naturally fed into the film. But the on-screen chemistry of its young cast represents Fast’s strongest appeal. Within Luthando’s circle, Asanda introduces us to her best friend Jodie (Mila Smith), Ayanda, and The Gals – Zenande (Khensani Khoza), Lazola (Ntsimedi Gwangwa) and Anele (Basetsana Motloung). The young girls were found through casting tapes and then assigned their homework: “In the callbacks, we started talking about their high school experiences and how they identified with the character that they were auditioning for. And then I did little chemistry tests, putting them into different groups to see how they work together. That audition went off the rails, but in a good way.”  The director also screened Emma Seligman’s Bottoms, a film that closely aligned with Asanda’s vision and wanted her cast to get into the spirit of being “young, fun and irreverent”. With such attention to detail at work, I joked about whether Asanda had become a school teacher for the group, but those exercises genuinely helped their on-screen bonding of friendship and girlhood. The homework was also reciprocal – Asanda shared her own journey with the actresses, starting with writing a letter to her 17-year-old self and shared her yearbook with them, where she aspired to be a “corporate diva on her way to New York”. 

She laughs at the memory now as so much has changed, and for the better. For a slice of Afrobubblegum, it’s an opportunity to tell stories that traverse the spectrum of what Black, queer storytelling can be. Black Burns Fast is a chance to see something different and vibrant, and Asanda hopes audiences can take the leap with her.

The interview has been edited for consistency and clarity.

BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival takes place from 18^th-29^th March at BFI Southbank. Tickets go on sale from 24^th February for BFI members and on general sale from 26^th February. //whatson.bfi.org.uk/flare