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Africa filmmaking agency Realness Institute has selected 15 participants for the 4th edition of the Creative Producer Indaba (Cpi), a training scheme for advancing the work of independent producers both from and working with the African continent.

Participants for the latest Cpi run include South Africa’s Ephraim Gordon, who produced Amy Jephta’s Barakat, South Africa’s submission to the international feature award at the 2022 Oscars. Gordon produces through Nagvlug Films, and has also directed for TV series including comedy Taktiek.

Scroll down for the full list of Cpi participants

Also selected from South Africa is Vanessa Sinden, senior producer at Triggerfish Animation,...

Underscoring the enduring popularity of crime drama, Abacus Media Rights (Amr), an Amcomri Entertainment company, has announced a slew of sales on two titles, led by Showmax Original “Catch Me a Killer,” a true crime drama with “Game of Thrones’” Charlotte Hope playing South Africa’s first and most famous serial killer profiler. Hope also headed “The Spanish Princess,” as Catherine of Aragon.

Amr has moreover closed further deals on fiction drama “Scrublands,” a scripted drama about the real reasons for a country town massacre. The sales comes as it is readying a screening of a third title, “The Boy That Never Was,” at this week’s London TV Screenings.

Scoring a coveted berth at next month’s Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV festival, “Catch Me a Killer” has sold, among major territories, to BritBox North America, Sbs Australia, UKTV’s Alibi channel and Axn’s Mystery Channel/Nhk Enterprises (Nep) in Japan.

Exclusive: Tubi has landed U.S. and Canadian rights to South African limited series Devil’s Peak about a Detective tracking down a vigilante killer in Cape Town.

Penned by Moon Knight scribe Matthew Orton, the big-budget five-episode thriller is based on a hit 2004 novel by Deon Meyer and is produced by Happy Valley maker Lookout Point and Expanded Media Productions in association with MultiChoice Studios and BBC Studios. It launched last year locally on South Africa’s M-Net and BBC Studios sells around the world.

Starring Hilton Pelser, the series follows Detective Benny Griessel, who is tasked with tracking down a vigilante killer whose crimes are capturing the imagination of the city. As he gets closer to his mark, Griessel finds himself drawn into a dark and dangerous world where nothing is what it seems.

Fox-owned Tubi has landed U.S. and Canadian rights from next week.

“Devil’s Peak...

“Yop,” “Unspoken,” and “Asma” look like potential standout titles at this year’s Series Mania’s Forum Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, still one of Series Mania’s industry centerpieces which in 2023 is shaping up in many ways to be a bumper edition.

Running March 21-23, the Forum hosts now a swathe of ever building industry initiatives at Series Mania, which unspools in Lille, northern France, over March 17-24.

450 projects from 66 countries answered the call for admissions, an all time record, said Francesco Capurro, head of the Series Mania Forum.

“We have more and more projects from outside Europe. An increasing number from Africa: Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria, which is very encouraging, as well as from other big markets outside Europe, like Canada, Turkey, Taiwan,” he added.

Reasons cut various ways for Capurro: “Series Mania is getting more and more well known, including outside Europe. The Lille-based event has also established highly productive partnerships with key industry bodies,...

Protest

Oscar and Venice-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras and fellow filmmakers Georgia Oakley (“Blue Jean”), Roberto Minervini (“What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?”) and Ondi Timoner (“Last Flight Home”) were among those who protested against the imprisonment of Iranian filmmakers and other incarcerated artists around the world, and to demonstrate support for the tenacious women of Iran who are challenging for their freedom at the BFI London Film Festival on Monday.

They joined festival director Tricia Tuttle, producer Madeleine Molyneaux (“Gospel Hill”); actors Aurélia Petit (“Saint Omer”) and Taki Mumladze (“A Room of My Own”); actor and writer Mariam Khundadze (“To Batumi and every single memory”); writer Morgan M. Page (“Framing Agnes”); industry leaders Tabitha Jackson, Clare Binns and Jason Wood; and other festival delegates in a moment of solidarity and reflection.

They stood together holding the names of imprisoned Iranian filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof, Mostafa Al-Ahmad and Jafar Panahi,...

Click here to read the full article.

Game of Thrones and The Nun actress Charlotte Hope is set to appear as Micki Pistorius, South Africa’s first-ever serial-killer profiler, in Catch Me a Killer, a new true crime series from Germany’s Night Train Media and South Africa’s M-Net/Showmax.

Hope, who played Myranda in Game of Thrones and headlined Starz’s The Spanish Princess as Catherine of Aragon, will star in Catch Me a Killer, which is adapted from Pistorius’ memoir. Set in the mid-90s, the series traces Pistorius’ quest, as a newly-qualified forensic psychologist, to track down South Africa’s most feared killers at a time when the country was gripped by an epidemic of rising crime and mass murder.

“It is always a challenge and a privilege to recreate a real life character and Micki is no exception,” Hope said in a statement. “Micki herself...

Exclusive: Amy Jephta, who directed South Africa’s most recent International Film Oscar entry, Barakat, will be showrunning the drama series Hanover Street from D6 Entertainment’s Lesley-Ann Brandt and Adrian Cunningham, and Revelations Entertainment’s Lori McCreary and Morgan Freeman.

Hanover Street follows the joyful and heartbreaking journey of two sisters in Cape Town’s District Six during South Africa’s Apartheid years. The vibrant neighborhood was home to 60k residents of all ethnicities and creeds, along with a thriving LGBTQ+ population. In 1966 the government designated it a “Whites-only” area. By 1982 the entire population had been forcibly removed, with families torn apart and the neighborhood destroyed. Hanover Street will reflect upon the correlation between the racial reconciliation that has taken place in South Africa and the important conversations happening in America today.

It’s been 30 years since Freeman and McCreary teamed on their first feature film, Bopha!

Gentleman Jack producer Lookout Point and Expanded Media Productions are adapting Deon Meyer’s bestseller Devil’s Peak into a five-part series for M-Net.

Set in Cape Town, the thriller is being adapted by Moon Knight writer Matthew Orton and follows talented but broken Detective Benny Griessel, who is tasked with tracking down a righteous vigilante killer whose crimes are capturing the imagination of the city. Benny and grieving father Thobela are brought into the orbit of trapped mother Christine, who is willing to do anything to achieve a better life for herself and her daughter, and the fates of these three characters become inextricably linked as the series builds to its explosive climax.

Series stars Hilton Pelser, Sisanda Henna and Tarryn Wyngaard and is being directed by Jozua Malherbe. Orton is adapting with Amy Jephta, who is also associate producer.

Dorothy Ghettuba remembers the moment that changed her life. The Kenya-born entrepreneur was traveling with friends in Zambia when their driver fell asleep at the wheel, sending their van careening off the road and into a tree. The group left the accident unscathed, but the brush with death rattled Ghettuba. “Things can happen to you that make you pause,” she tells Variety. “And that was a thing that made me pause and say to myself, ‘If today was my last day, have I lived my best life?’”

Ghettuba had been working at a venture capital firm in Canada, but she left her job and returned to Kenya, where she began to chase a lifelong dream to join the entertainment industry and tell the kinds of stories that spoke to her. Within a few years she’d produced her first pilot for public broadcaster Kbc and was soon developing a slate...

Louverture Films, the production company founded by actor Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes, is moving into television as well as animation, gaming and installation works. With two new principal partners in situ, the expansion has enlisted a host of creatives, including directors Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Lucrecia Martel.

Co-founded by Glover and Barnes in 2005 — alongside long-time partners Susan Rockefeller and the Bertha Foundation’s Tony Tabatznik — the company has brought on board Sawsan Asfari and Jeffrey Clark as principal partners. Variety understands that the new partners will allow Louverture to access more funding resources.

In addition, producer Karin Chien, who on Sunday delivered a rousing Sundance Institute Producing Fellows’ keynote, is becoming a partner and executive VP. Meanwhile, Barnes has been promoted to president while Glover remains CEO and co-founder.

Louverture, named after Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture, has built its reputation on international and arthouse films and a strong theatrical documentary slate.

South African cinema is still catching up to the diversity of the population it represents: a congregation of cultures, languages and religions that got ironed out in the popular imagination by the white supremacist politics of the apartheid era. The country’s significant Cape Muslim, or Cape Malay, population is one demographic that has traditionally received short shrift on screen, a context that makes Amy Jephta’s hearty, fractious family comedy “Barakat” more of a milestone than its relatively modest storytelling might suggest. Following four adult brothers upended by news of their widowed mother’s plans to remarry, the film may skirt cliché in its broad depiction of fragile masculinity versus women’s intuition, but ultimately thrives on its vivid social and linguistic particularities.

The first film by a woman of color ever to be selected as South Africa’s Oscar submission, “Barakat” has played a number of diasporic and African-specific international festivals,...

Of the six Sub-Saharan African submissions, the buzziest titles include Somalia’s first-ever entry, “The Gravedigger’s Wife” from feature debutant Khadar Ayderus Ahmed and Chad’s Cannes competitor, “Lingui: The Sacred Bonds” from veteran helmer Mahamet-Saleh Haroun.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s dysfunctional family dramedy “Barakat” from Amy Jephta earns points for likeability although it represents a genre not usually awarded by the Academy. Nevertheless, the tale of a family feud developing when the clan matriarch decides to take a second chance on love is a universally relatable one.

“The Gravedigger’s Wife” arri-ves at the Academy screenings trailing the top prize from Fespaco, Africa’s largest film festival. Mogadishu-born director-writer Ahmed came to Finland as a refugee at the age of 16 and returned to his African roots for his first feature, which is both a touching love story and a tragedy of social injustice about a poor man trying to get treatment for his ailing wife.

South Africa has selected Barakat as its official submission for the best international feature category at the 94th Oscars in 2022.

The country’s National Film and Video Foundation (Nfvf) decision makes the movie from filmmaker, playwright, screenwriter and theater director Amy Jephta the fourth from a female director to be submitted to the Academy Awards by South Africa, and the first from “a woman of color,” a Monday announcement highlighted.

Barakat follows Muslim widow Aisha “as she tries to bring together her fractured family over Eid-al-Fitr to break the news about her new romance.” Vinette Ebrahim plays the ageing ...

South Africa has selected Barakat as its official submission for the best international feature category at the 94th Oscars in 2022.

The country’s National Film and Video Foundation (Nfvf) decision makes the movie from filmmaker, playwright, screenwriter and theater director Amy Jephta the fourth from a female director to be submitted to the Academy Awards by South Africa, and the first from “a woman of color,” a Monday announcement highlighted.

Barakat follows Muslim widow Aisha “as she tries to bring together her fractured family over Eid-al-Fitr to break the news about her new romance.” Vinette Ebrahim plays the ageing ...

South African broadcaster M-Net has commissioned series Detective Cooper from Goalpost Pictures and South African Quizzical Pictures (Intersexions).

The drama is adapted from Australian/South African writer Malla Nunn’s A Beautiful Place to Die, centering on a white detective in apartheid-era South Africa with a dangerous secret: he is in fact mixed race.

Goalpost Pictures optioned Nunn’s novels early last year, and the author – a recent winner of the LA Book Prize for YA Literature – is the story editor on the production.

Sarah Christie is development producer for Goalpost, with Kylie du Fresne and Rosemary Blight to executive produce alongside Quizzical’s Nimrod Geva.

LA-based British/Australian writer James McNamara, who was twice named ‘international rising star’ by BAFTA LA, is creating the series for television, in partnership with South African Writer Amy Jephta.

A director has yet to be confirmed for the project.

Du Fresne said the...

Australia’s Goalpost Pictures and South Africa’s Quizzical Pictures are teaming up on the crime series “Detective Cooper” for South African broadcaster M-Net, marking the first TV co-production between the two countries.

The series will be adapted from the book “A Beautiful Place to Die,” part of the multi-award-winning Detective Emmanuel Cooper book series by Australian-South African writer Malla Nunn (pictured). Goalpost Pictures are the producers of the worldwide hit “The Invisible Man” and the acclaimed television series “Cleverman.” Quizzical Pictures produced the Peabody Award-winning “Intersexions.”

“Detective Cooper” centers on a white detective in Apartheid-era South Africa who’s forced to hide the dangerous secret that he’s mixed race. The series is set in a time and place where white nationalism is on the rise and racial tensions are at a breaking point.

L.A.-based British-Australian writer James McNamara, a contributing writer to publications including The New...

The new literary agency will focus on local and international filmmaking talent.

Former Casarotto Ramsay agent David Kayser has teamed up with Aoife Lennon-Ritchie of The Lennon-Ritchie Agency to launch Torchwood, a new South Africa-based literary agency representing screenwriters, directors and producers.

The firm has offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg and will represent clients both in South Africa and globally. It already represents talent in the UK, Ireland, France, Denmark, Nigeria and South Africa and will represent clients internationally and locally.

Kayser and Lennon-Ritchie are founding partners and currently the sole agents on the company.

Torchwood has signed a...

In 2012, before he became an Imagine Entertainment screenwriter, Justin Calen-Chenn received his film education in a crappy hotel room. He’d already worked on a handful of short films, but he also had a life in the violent Los Angeles underworld that forced him to spend weeks hiding out. To pass the time, he read classic screenplays like “Midnight Cowboy” while eating Domino’s Pizza.

Four years later, a close friend suffered a brutal death and Calen-Chenn said that’s when everything changed. “I had the choice to continue to the top, or give it all up,” he said.

Calen-Chenn, who’s now 36, chose the latter. He and his creative partner Stephen “Dr” Love workshopped “The 99” as part of Imagine Impact, an intense, eight-week program that seeks unknown or underrepresented writers with unique stories and gets their projects ready for sale.

An offshoot of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine,...

Imagine Entertainment has set its roster of participants of Impact 2, the inventive program where the company empowers outside voices, “creators,” paying the newcomers accepted to the program to develop TV series and movies under the watchful eye of “shapers,” a group of established industry writers and showrunners. The program, hatched by Imagine co-heads Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, this year got over 4000 submissions from 57 countries covering every continent but Antarctica. Tyler Mitchell runs the program.

The “shapers” in this year’s program are: Stacy Traub, Akiva Goldsman, Doug Ellin, Seth Grahame-Smith, Michele Mulroney, Kieran Mulroney and Sascha Penn.

Here are the newcomers whose work was accepted and who will be paid a stipend to create one new project during the boot camp, before all of the work gets pitched to the town. Traub will oversee:

Writer/actor and Chicago native Aris Mendoza is creating the half hour TV project Blasian...