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For years, many South Africans have known Rachel Kolisi through the life they saw from the outside. Falling Forward introduces us to the little girl behind the woman we thought we knew.
The documentary was screened at Grace Family Church in Durban as part of a national roadshow, followed by an intimate conversation with Kolisi. A women-led market also showcased products made by small, women-owned South African businesses.
The film takes her back to a childhood marked by her parents’ separation, her mother leaving, and the enormous responsibility of helping to raise her younger siblings while she was still a child herself.
I did not know this part of her story. Watching it, so much of what she shares about the woman she became suddenly makes sense.
The feeling of being unwanted keeps returning. So does the fear that the people she loves will eventually leave. It followed her into adulthood, even as she built a family of her own and a life that, from the outside, appeared secure.
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The child behind the woman
Her marriage and its ending form part of the story, but they are not the whole story and certainly not the centre of who she is.
Anyone arriving in the hope of hearing the details behind the headlines will not find them here. Rachel tells her own story: the child she was, the mother she became, the parts of herself she lost along the way and the woman she is getting to know again.
What she does share is how it felt when the life she knew fell apart.
Kolisi revealed after the screening that the first interview seen in the documentary was filmed just a week after news of the divorce became public.
“You can literally see in my eyes that something has died in me,” she said. “I’m actually half a human there.”
Watching that version of herself is still difficult, but it also shows her how far she has come. She does not pretend that healing has been neat, or that she now wakes up happy and whole every morning.
“I’m not on the mountaintops every single day,” she said. “There are days when I feel like the wind is in my sails and it feels beautiful. But there are still days that are really, really hard.”
That honesty stayed with me. We speak about resilience as though it always looks brave. Sometimes it is simply getting off the floor, going to work, caring for your children and deciding that this painful place will not become your permanent home.
“I think that’s what the message in Falling Forward is,” Kolisi said. “It’s accepting and acknowledging that life can sometimes be hard, but you choose not to stay there.”
From private pain to a room full of women
The evening was emotional, but it was not heavy all the way through. Kolisi is funny and able to laugh at herself. At one point she joked that perhaps the anniversary of the day she became officially divorced deserved champagne.
That laughter was needed. It stopped the evening from feeling as though we had gathered simply to watch another woman’s pain. Around the room, women were clearly finding pieces of their own stories in hers.
Kolisi said she had already heard heartbreaking stories from women navigating difficult seasons. Her own struggle, she acknowledged, simply happened to unfold in full public view.
“We’re all navigating something really hard. Mine just happened to be really freaking public,” she said. “If I can use that to create a space and an opportunity for others, then hell yeah, I’m going to do it.”
The night was intentionally designed with the woman who is struggling in mind, including the introvert who might slip into the back row, avoid the crowd, and leave quickly afterwards. Kolisi said she did not want anyone to walk away believing there was no hope, or that she had no one standing behind her.
During one of her lowest periods, messages from women telling her that “an army” was behind her became a source of strength. Now, she wants to offer another woman that same feeling on her worst day.
Singer-songwriter Anica Kiana, whose original song Falling Forward gives the documentary its musical voice, performed with the Durban Girls’ High School Choir. It was one of the most moving moments of the evening and added to the feeling that this was more than a screening. By then, the room had become a place for women to sit with their own stories too.
Why Rachel Kolisi returned to Durban
This was the second Durban outing for Falling Forward, with Kolisi saying the roadshow returned in response to demand from local audiences.
She also has a personal affection for the city after living here for eight months.
“I love the posture of the people here,” she told Time Out Durban. “I love how people are relaxed and kind of go with life and the flow of life.”
And when she is in Durban, it is nature rather than a particular restaurant or attraction that draws her back.
“My favourite spot is probably a beach somewhere,” she said. “The water is always warm, the sand is beautiful, and anything in nature in Durban is amazing.”
Asked how she continues to retell such a vulnerable story night after night, Kolisi said she reminds herself that every room is meeting the film for the first time.
“The intention was to create something that people can relate to and reflect on in their own lives,” she said.
That is why Falling Forward connects. Rachel’s circumstances may be unusually public, but the emotions underneath them are not. Many people know what it is to carry an old hurt into a new chapter, or to discover that the capable person everyone sees is still protecting the child who once felt unwanted.
Kolisi does not claim to have figured everything out. She is still living through it. What has changed is that the beautiful days now outnumber the difficult ones. She is more deliberate about protecting her peace, choosing her environment and deciding who gets to share her space.
The title does not suggest that she will never fall again. It is about what she has chosen to do each time she does: get up, even if it takes a while, and keep moving forward.
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