Zola Maseko was born in exile and educated in Swaziland and at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania. He obtained a post-graduate film degree in London. Returning home in 1994 his breakthrough was The Foreigner a short, hard-hitting film about xenophobia. It won Best Short Film at the Urban World Festival in New York in 1996. In 1998 he directed The Life and Times of Sara Bartman, which gained international recognition followed, by the Return of Sara Bartman. His breakthrough feature film was Drum, the 1950s biopic about investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo. The film was a critical success playing at Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, New York and London Film Festival’s as well as picking up the top prize at FESPACO, Africa’s premier festival in 2005. This was followed by his documentary The Manuscripts of Timbuktu, which is a set work for graduate and undergraduate studies at Harvard University. He also directed the sensational internationally acclaimed a cappela group “The Soil’s – Reflections - Live in Johannesburg.” The Whale Caller, which he produced and directed, is his second feature film.
Pan African Film Festival
