REHAD DESAI
DIRECTOR & PRODUCER
Rehad Desai is a Cape Town-born filmmaker who returned from exile in 1990 and now lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Rehad has a Masters in History and began making documentaries in 1998. He formed Uhuru Productions in 2003 and has been the driving force behind the company ever since. Rehad Desai is also the Chairperson of the Human Rights Media Trust, formed in 2004.
Over the course of his time as a filmmaker, he has conceived and produced over 20 documentary films, many of which he has directed or co-directed. Six of these films have been feature length documentaries, produced with significant international participation and have received critical acclaim and wide festival take-up.
Rehad Desai is the founder director of the Tri Continental Human Rights Film Festival.
KONI BENSON
PRODUCER & RESEARCHER
Koni Benson is an historian, organiser, and educator in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of the Western Cape. She draws on critical and creative approaches to people’s history projects, popular education, and feminist collaborative research praxis to coproduce histories of organising for public services/the commons with social movement archives and with student, activist, and cultural collectives in southern Africa.
Koni spent eight years working with social movements and trade unions as a researcher/educator at the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG), and as a researcher/organiser for the Blue Planet Project supporting campaigns against water privatisation across Africa. She is a member of the African Water Commons Collective, the Africa Water Justice Network, and the End Water Apartheid campaign, and the author of Crossroads: I Live Where I Like, and coauthor with Faeza Meyer of the forthcoming book Writing Out Loud: Interventions in the History of a Land Occupation.
NIC HOFMEYR
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Nic kicked off his career in the nineteen eighties, working mainly on music videos in London and Los Angeles, before moving to Johannesburg where he directed some seminal clips for South African artistes, in the politically charged climate of the late nineteen eighties and early nineties. At the same time he got into the then vibrant world of documentary film making, in the process witnessing many of the tumultuous events that led to South Africa’s transition to democracy in 1994. He went on to direct and photograph many documentaries around the African continent. Today he’s made the move to fiction filmmaking as a Director of Photography, shooting feature films and television drama. Nic is known for his gritty depiction of the city of Johannesburg and its environs, photographing films such as Gangsters Paradise: Jerusalema, How to Steal Two Million, Dora’s Peace, Freedom, and in self-penned feature doc Main Reef Road.
MATTHEW ROBINSON
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Matthew Robinson is a 33-year-old documentary director and cinematographer based in Cape Town, South Africa. After graduating from the University of Cape Town with a BCom PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics), he studied Film Directing at City Varsity School of Media and Creative Arts. In 2022, he was commissioned by The Mail & Guardian to produce a short documentary on the 10-year anniversary of the Marikana massacre. Shortly thereafter, he began working as a cinematographer for Uhuru Productions, working on Capturing Water and Mathonga Elizwe. Matthew has also produced and filmed the short documentary, Conscripted Poet, for publication in the Mail & Guardian. He is currently developing his first directorial feature, Vuka, co-produced with Rehad Desai.
ANITA KHANNA
PRODUCER & WRITER
South African based scriptwriter and producer, and impact producer, Anita Khanna, has writing and producing credits that include award winning documentaries, Miners Shot Down, Everything Must Fall and How to Steal a Country, She has conceived and produced three documentary series plus a drama series for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, The Mating Game. Between 2011 and 2018 she directed the Tri Continental Social Impact Film Festival. Anita drove the first live event of Doc Society’s Good Pitch on African soil (Johannesburg 2011). Passionate about climate and social justice, Anita is a co-director of Climate Story Labs ZA and the lead producer of the Hotspot Film Series, plus a proud winner of the BritDoc Impact Award 2015, for her film campaign work on Miners Shot Down.
MEGAN GILL
EDITOR
Megan Gill is a South African-based editor and in a career spanning 20 years, Mega has worked on a wealth of television and film productions including documentaries Miners Shot Down which garnered 28 awards, as well as an Emmy for Best International Documentary and the Golden Horn at the SAFTA’s for editing The Giant is Falling. Most recently Megan Gill edited the critically-acclaimed film Eye in the Sky starring Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman. Megan also edited Tsotsi, Rendition, Otelo Burning, X-Men Origins and Wolverine amongst many more. Megan also edited Tsotsi, Rendition, Otelo Burning, X-Men Origins and Wolverine amongst many more. Megan also edited Tsotsi, Rendition, Otelo Burning, X-Men Origins and Wolverine amongst many more.
GEERT VEUSKENS
EDITOR
Geert Veuskens is an award-winning documentary editor based in Brussels, Belgium. With over a decade of experience, he has worked on investigative and character-driven films that expose social injustices, political conflicts, and environmental challenges. His collaborations with filmmakers from Belgium, South Africa, and beyond have led to impactful stories that have reached international audiences through major film festivals and extensive broadcasting. He also shares his knowledge as a guest lecturer, providing practical insights into both storytelling and the editing process. Currently Geert is taking his first steps in developing his own documentary projects.
TSOGO KUPA
EDITOR
Tsogo Kupa is a documentary filmmaker & writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He’s a graduate from The University of the Witwatersrand, earning his BA (Hons) in Film & Television in 2020. His graduation film, Sikelela Tapes, has travelled across prestigious European, African & American film festivals and won an award for editing in the Netherlands. With 5 years of experience in multiple roles in video production, his passion for visual storytelling is underscored by a passionate belief that impact can be developed in communities by fostering empathy for the voices and faces of those commonly unseen and unheard.
FAEZA MEYER
IMPACT COORDINATOR
Faeza Meyer is a working class black feminists community based activist and organizer, who has been involved in campaigns for housing, water, education, health and women’s rights in Cape Town, South Africa, since 2011. Her activism started when she occupied land in an area called Tafelsig with 5000 other people and as a result was exposed to different political organisations, state repression and the media. She was the first chairperson of the Cape Town Housing Assembly, a founding member of the feminist organization Women For Change, and a founding member of the African Water Commons Collective. She was also a member of the African Ecofeminist Collective and the Western Cape Water Caucus (WCWC) which is a chapter of the South African Water Caucus (SAWC) and a member of the Africa Water Justice Network. She has written many blogs and op-eds and was part of “Victims of Eviction,” “Tafelisg Doccie,” and “Wake a Child” available on YouTube. She is the coauthor with Koni Benson of the forthcoming book, Writing Out Loud: Interventions in the History of a Land Occupation.
JACQUELINE VAN MEYGAARDEN
IMPACT PRODUCER
An accomplished producer and director, Jacqueline has 20 years of experience as a storyteller, first touring internationally with multimedia feminist visual theatre, then shifted to non-fiction filmmaking to create impactful stories reaching wider audiences. She has spent over 15 years developing documentary content about the climate crisis, environmental justice and regeneration, and has worked in southern Africa, Cambodia and Madagascar.
Jacqueline was awarded the Commonwealth Vision Award (2007) for her short film Free Energy; co-curated an international visual theatre festival, Out the Box (2008-2011); produced factual content for 50/50 for the national broadcaster (SABC), directed the short film Farm to Fork for the Food Series, and produced climate justice campaign content for 350.Org in Africa. She is currently co-producing and directing on HOTSPOT and is the co-producer of Water Stories, an interactive storytelling platform that shares stories about freshwater & ocean pollution. Jacqueline is the co-chair of Mycelium Media Colab, a collaborative enterprise that uses storytelling to create awareness of African social and environmental regenerative solutions. She is based in Cape Town, South Africa and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Witwatersrand.