François Verster

Convenor of the Documentary Film Project

François Verster is an Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker based in Cape Town, South Africa. His films generally follow creative and observational approaches to social issues and have all won multiple local and international awards – these include The Dream of Shahrazad, Sea Point Days, The Mothers’ House, A Lion’s Trail, and When the War Is Over. Recently he produced, filmed, and edited Shameela Seedat’s Whispering Truth to Power, which won the Special Jury prize at Hot Docs, and co-directed Scenes from A Dry City, which was Emmy-nominated and won the prestigious World Press Photo Digital Online Video award. Verster has taught documentary or held fellowships at Columbia University, New York University, University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand and elsewhere, and has published on documentary in various journals and anthologies. Between 2014 and 2019, he taught a postgraduate course in creative documentary at the Centre for Humanities Research. From 2020 this course evolved into a “documentary think tank” as part of the greater Communicating the Humanities project. Verster has appeared on various festival juries and has had nine local or international festival retrospectives or special focus series on his work, most recently at the University of Indiana, Bloomington.

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