South Africa-based filmmaker Zoe Ramushu is soaring on the international stage, with her latest short film Damsel, Not in Distress premiering next month at the New York African Film Festival.
Ramushu is also celebrating a nomination at the 2025 Screen International Global Production Awards, set for May 19 at the Cannes International Film Festival.
The nomination — in the impact leadership award category — is for her innovative app, Wrapped. The production-focused app supports, protects and assists women of diverse backgrounds in the film industry. “It hasn’t yet publicly been announced, but we are funded, backed and supported by MultiChoice,” the award-winning director told the Sunday Times.
“I’m actually really grateful that my funding has come from South Africa ... it just feels completely different and heartwarming to be received with open arms at home.”
On her latest film set to premiere in New York next month, she said it was special because the city felt like her home for film. “I graduated from Columbia University and that’s where I shot my first short film, which was nominated for a student Oscar and funded by the Pulitzer Center. It feels like the first time I found my voice as a director in film.
“The year before last, we screened another short film, which I produced. Having us go back this year to the Lincoln Center [where the New York awards will be held], which is such a historical space — and having our film seen there — just feels like a really huge step forward for us.”
Ramushu, 35, who was born in Zimbabwe, cofounded film and television production company Totem Zea with business partner Reabetswe Moeti-Vogt — and she sees this milestone as a win not only for the company, but for African storytellers as a whole. “It feels like a huge step forward for us as a company, but also for African filmmakers,” she said.
Damsel, Not in Distress is centred on Aluta, who infiltrates a crew of party girls — who are hustling Joburg’s rich and powerful using charm and deception — to fulfil a secret mission to find her sister.
The film’s screening in New York comes with excitement and anticipation.
“It’s an exciting and sometimes nerve-racking experience because you don’t know what parts are going to land, what things people are going to relate to. But I think that’s the exciting part as a filmmaker.”
This isn’t Ramushu’s first New York highlight. She previously co-produced Real Estate Sisters, a Netflix film that premiered in that city — a “truly incredible experience”, she recalled. “It still feels a bit unreal to know that you are being recognised on a global stage, among such incredible people. But at the same time, it feels real and it feels validating knowing that a ‘little black girl’ belongs in these spaces.”
For Ramushu, the Wrapped nomination is more than a personal achievement — it is deeply symbolic. “These are the affirmations we speak to ourselves: You deserve a seat at the table, you deserve to be walking corridors of power. So I feel that this is a manifestation of the affirmations that myself and lots of other young black women speak to themselves — and believe.”
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