SOUTH Africa-based Zimbabwean award winning filmmaker, journalist, and tech founder Zoe Ramushu is making significant strides in the global film industry with notable projects and awards under her name.
The unsung high achiever and execution champion was recently nominated for the 2025 Global Production Awards (GPA), which will take place during the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival on May 19.
This marks her second GPA appearance following her shortlisting for the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award last year. The ceremony will be hosted at the Mademoiselle Gray Barrière restaurant located in the resort town of Cannes in Paris.
The awards celebrate outstanding and sustainable work in the world of film and TV production, locations, and studios. Among the shortlisted are popular American film production and distribution companies, namely Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and the on-demand streaming service platform Netflix.
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“I am selected under the impact leadership award category. I have been nominated as an individual and for my app called Wrapped, which is an app that helps you crew up, with diversity as a priority,” she told IndependentXtra.
According to www.globalproductionawards, the event will be attended by leading producers, location managers, unit production managers, studios, film commissions, locations executives, industry bodies and “everyone who plays a key role in making sure productions happen”.
Born in Bulawayo and now based in Cape Town, the internationally-recognised startup entrepreneur took the stage at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival last year, showcasing her film app alongside other global tech giants after it was handpicked by the European Film Market (EFM) Startups programme as one of the top ten tech solutions for the film and television industry globally.
The mobile and web-based application enables companies and freelancers in the film and television industry to hire and be hired, train and be trained in an inclusive and efficient way.
It addresses the diversity gap in the hiring, training, onboarding, and payment processes. Developed by Ramushu’s production company, Chiriseri Studios, it connects crews and production teams through advanced search filters coded for diversity, in-app messaging, and seamless booking.
Crews can showcase their availability and rates, while production teams can find and Ramushu shortlisted for Global Production Awards book the right talent for their projects.
“My journey in impact work has been a meaningful one, from co-founding women in film organisations such as Sisters Working in Film and Television (SWIFT) in South Africa, to leading student protests at Columbia Journalism school and creating the Chiriseri Test, a guide for newsrooms to diversify whilst I was a Reuters Institute fellow at Oxford,” she said.
“This journey has led me to create an app that assists productions to crew up efficiently, but also inclusively and I am grateful and energised that we are now funded by Multichoice who have recognised that our vision aligns with their values.”
Her work with SWIFT through their #ThatsNotOkay campaign led to the adoption of a Code of Conduct that the organisation formed to combat against sexual harassment by government and private funders. The 50/50 by 2020 gender equality agreement with the Durban Film Festival, the largest film festival in Southern Africa, and the Safety Officer programme is now used on Multichoice and Netflix Africa productions.
A writer, director, producer, and actress, Ramushu’s career took off in 2013 when she featured in South African commercials. In 2015, she produced My Perfect Date, her first project, a reality show filmed in Harare. Her New York-based documentary Takes A Circus was nominated for the 48th Student Academy Awards, and To The Plate was shortlisted for a Student British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), funded by the Pulitzer Centre.
Her second film, Third Wheel, was the recipient of the exclusive SA-Netherlands Thuthuka co-production fund and her current project, Corruption Is An English Word, was selected for the Durban Film Mart (DFM) Jumpstart ‘24 and also shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriters lab. She is also producing Generation Africa 2.0, a 25-film documentary slate amplifying African voices in the global climate change dialogue.
Real Estate Sisters, a comedy thriller that she wrote and produced, made its Netflix debut in April last year and quickly rose to the top, trending among the platform’s top ten most watched films.
It fuses crime, romance, and mystery and was among six projects funded by the Netflix and National Film and Video Foundation grants programme for South African Filmmakers. Ramushu is a fellow of the Cannes Producers Network, DFM, The Gotham (formerly the Independent Filmmaker Project), and Creative Producer’s Indaba.
She studied law, journalism, and African literature and holds an MA and MSc from Wits University and Columbia University in New York.
