Every second of January, Cape Town's streets fill with musicians and dancers as the city's mixed-race community holds its annual Coon Carnival. The film traces the event's origins to 1834, the year slavery was abolished in the Cape Colony, and follows participants as they parade in matching troupe uniforms of bright satin, feathers, and beads, singing and playing banjos and drums along the route. Troupes rehearse songs and choreography for months beforehand, and the parade itself doubles as a competition between groups, each trying to outdo the others in costume and sound. The camera stays close to the marchers and the crowds lining the pavements, letting the music and the noise of the street carry the film rather than narration. What comes through is a community using one day a year to claim public space and tell its own history, on its own terms, in a country where that history was long suppressed.