François Verster

Convenor of the Documentary Film Project

Francois Verster is an Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker based in Cape Town, South Africa.  His films are acclaimed for their intimacy, social insight and formal innovation, and have all won local and international awards, showing at major global festivals and galleries such as IDFA, Toronto IFF, Hot Docs, Visions du Reel, AFI, MOMA New York, the Jeu de Paume Paris and the Sydney FF.  Titles include THE DREAM OF SHAHRAZAD (2014), SEA POINT DAYS (2009), THE MOTHERS’ HOUSE (2006), A LION’S TRAIL (2002) and WHEN THE WAR IS OVER (2002).  He produced, filmed and edited Shameela Seedat’s films WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER (2018) which won the Special Jury prize at Hot Docs, the prestigious 2019 African Studies Association Film Award, a Bronze Stallion at FESPACO and many other awards, as well as her followup film AFRICAN MOOT (2022) which recently premiered at Hot Docs.  He co-directed SCENES FROM A DRY CITY (2018), which won the World Press Photo Digital Online Video as well as multiple other awards, as well as GIRL, TAKEN (2022), currently on Paramount Plus.  Verster has taught documentary classes or held fellowships at Columbia University New York, University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand and elsewhere, and has published on documentary in various journals and anthologies.  He currently convenes a think tank on creative documentary at the University of the Western Cape.  He has appeared on various festival juries and has had ten festival retrospectives or special focus series on his work, most recently at Indiana University, Bloomington.

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