There are films that arrive at a festival and quietly earn their place in the programme. And then there are films that feel like an event. Apart, the animated short making its world premiere at Tribeca Festival 2026, belongs firmly in the second category.
Written by Spike Lee alongside Tim Jones, Jeff Leisawitz, and Lubabalo Mtati, and directed by South African artist Pola Maneli, Apart is a collaboration of rare ambition—one that brings together some of the most distinctive creative voices from both sides of the Atlantic to tell a story rooted in one of history’s darkest chapters.
The Story
Set against the harsh backdrop of South African apartheid, Apart follows Themba and Joel—two boys whose unlikely friendship defies the hatred and fear dividing the world around them. When their bond faces its most dangerous test, a single life-saving gesture becomes the film’s emotional fulcrum: a moment of innocence in which hope, empathy, and human understanding still feel possible.
It is the kind of story that animation can carry with particular power—capable of rendering an era of immense violence with visual poetry rather than documentary realism, and of placing young audiences inside a world of moral complexity without sacrificing accessibility or warmth.
The Team
Apart is the product of a creative team deeply rooted in South African culture. Spike Lee brings his trademark bold perspective and sense of cultural urgency to the script, while director Pola Maneli—one of the most internationally acclaimed artists to emerge from South Africa—gives the film its distinctive visual identity. Maneli’s work, which centres on Blackness and the multidimensional lives of people of colour in South Africa, has previously appeared on the cover of The New Yorker and entered the permanent collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The film’s soundscape is shaped by Grammy-winning South African musician Black Coffee, serving as Music Supervisor—a choice that anchors the film’s emotional rhythm in the living culture of the country it depicts. Completing the creative ensemble, wardrobe designer Laduma Ngxokolo—South Africa’s leading fashion designer—created the characters’ distinctive isiXhosa-inspired clothing, weaving cultural heritage directly into the visual fabric of the story.
The Craft: A Technical Achievement
For animation enthusiasts, the production statistics behind Apart are nothing short of remarkable. The film combines four distinct animation techniques—traditional 2D frame-to-frame, cut-out, 3D, and 2.5D—producing a layered visual style that shifts register in ways that serve the story’s emotional needs.
The numbers speak to the scale of the undertaking. The film comprises 12 minutes and 30 seconds of frame-to-frame animation, complemented by 1 minute 16 seconds of cut-out animation and 1 minute 33 seconds of 3D work. In total, 18,000 frames were produced, with 9,000 of those animated on twos.
The project took approximately 600 days to complete, employed 14 different software tools, and brought together a team of 266 professionals — including 157 animation artists and 50 members of an Art Department whose expertise spanned production design, art direction, concept art, storyboarding, and motion design.
Animation Style and Artistic Heritage
The film’s visual language draws from two distinct sources. The first is Pola Maneli’s own iconic aesthetic, centering on Black identity and experience. The second is the woodcut print tradition, deployed here as a deliberate homage to the art forms used during apartheid to communicate resistance and document the struggles of Black South Africans between 1948 and 1994.
In an era of increasing debate around AI, Apart was created entirely by human artists, with no AI used in its production. The choice aligns meaningfully with the woodcut tradition—a craft built on the irreducible presence of the maker’s hand.
World Premiere Screenings at Tribeca 2026
Apart screens as part of the Animated Shorts programme, curated by Whoopi Goldberg — herself a figure whose career has long engaged with questions of race, history, and American identity.
- Saturday, June 6 at 2:30 pm — Spring Studios (50 Varick Street) Writer Spike Lee and director Pola Maneli will be in person for a post-screening conversation with programmer Whoopi Goldberg.
- Saturday, June 13 at 6:15 pm — AMC 19th Street East 6 (890 Broadway) Director Pola Maneli in person for a post-screening conversation.
Tickets are available at tribecafilm.com.
A first-look trailer can be viewed on YouTube and Vimeo.
Why Apart Matters
What makes this project genuinely significant is the ambition to tell a South African story through South African artistry. In a global animation industry grappling with questions of representation and cultural authorship, Apart offers a model: not a story about South Africa made by outsiders, but one co-constructed with voices that carry its history in their work and in their lives.
For audiences at Tribeca—and for the wider animation world—it is one of the most anticipated shorts of the festival season.
