In Kites (2025), Showmax delivers more than just a story. It gives us a city. Not the polished, panoramic Johannesburg of commercials and postcards, but the city that breathes through neon light, basslines, bad choices, and borrowed time. Kites does not ask to be understood through its plot. It demands to be felt through its environment, through the nights that stretch too long, the dreams that cost too much, and the friendships that unravel under city pressure. This is not a film about what happens. It is a film about how things happen in Johannesburg, and what it does to the hearts beating inside it.
There is something seductive about Jozi in this film. She is not just a backdrop. She is a character with presence and mood. She draws young people into her rhythm, offering them pockets of glory wrapped in danger. She does not give without taking. In Kites, every corner of the city pulses with intention. From street-level bike races to rooftop lounges soaked in house music, everything feels electric and reckless. The film leans into this, not to glamorize it, but to examine what youth does with energy when no one is watching and everyone is watching at once.
This city tests its characters. It gives them too many options and too little clarity. One of the core takeaways from Kites is how ambition takes different forms when the environment is volatile. In the hands of young South Africans portrayed in the film, ambition isn’t dressed in degrees or CVs. It’s tied to survival, soft life aspirations, hustle culture, and the unspoken code of Jozi streets. This kind of drive does not wait for approval. It creates its own currency, sometimes in clout, sometimes in chaos.
And then there’s vibe culture. The film immerses the viewer in a culture that many recognize but few interrogate. In Johannesburg, vibe is economy. Vibe is value. Kites shows us how nights out become political — who you’re seen with, what you wear, what you post. But it also explores what happens when the vibe becomes a prison. When appearances override intentions, and when image begins to crush substance. There’s power in being seen. But what is the cost of constant performance?
Friendship becomes a mirror for this tension. The film doesn’t frame companionship as an escape from the city’s pull, instead, it becomes the site of its loudest battles. Who do you trust when everyone is trying to win? Who do you protect when the prize is survival? The central characters of Kites share a bond that feels real but fragile. We watch it get tested in silent ways: in glances, in betrayals wrapped in justification, in truths left unsaid to preserve some twisted form of loyalty.
But underneath all this noise, there is something soft. Something tender. Kites also captures the vulnerability of youth. That deep yearning to be more than where you came from, to feel something real before you become numb. It honors the moments of connection: a shared silence on a rooftop, a phone call that shouldn’t have been answered, a dance floor confession. These are the moments that anchor the film and remind us that behind the smoke and chaos, there are still kids inside trying to make it out whole.
What makes Kites distinct is its honesty. It does not romanticize the hustle. It does not paint Johannesburg as a villain or a paradise. It holds up a mirror and says, “This is what it’s like. Look closely.” The film invites you to sit in the discomfort, to feel the beauty in the grime, and to ask yourself if you too have ever chased something that cost more than you imagined.
In a world that often demands linearity and resolution, Kites gives us mess. But it’s honest mess. And in that mess, there is story, there is city, and there is soul.
