Please join the DFA’s docLOVE Screenings Programme for a special Freedom Month screening of African Moot directed by DFA member Shameela Seedat.

Every year, over a hundred of the most talented law students from across the African continent gather in a different capital city to compete at the prestigious African Human Rights Moot Competition, the largest mock court competition in Africa. At the competition, these young aspirant lawyers act as both prosecution and defense in a cutting-edge human rights fictional court case, each hoping to win the case and bring back the trophy to their home country. AFRICAN MOOT takes a journey with 4 passionate law student teams – from Cape Town, Cairo, Kampala and Nairobi, as they spend months preparing in their home countries for a case dealing with refugee rights, and then travel to Botswana to converge for one intense week of legal oratory, debate, adventure, bonding and high emotion. Tracking their progress through various events and competition rounds, leading to a dramatic finale before international judges at Botswana’s highest court, the film intimately captures the student characters’ personal hopes, doubts, disappointment and inner and outer conflicts as they navigate this high stakes event.

AFRICAN MOOT uses the surface device of the popular competition documentary genre to ask deeper questions about refugee rights, freedom of movement, African identity and the possibility of hope for the future –  while also showing how committed youth are trying to shape the future of the continent on which they live.

Former lawyer turned filmmaker, Shameela Seedat’s first feature-length documentary WHISPERING TRUTH TO POWER (2018), about the last year in office of South Africa’s first female Public Protector, opened several film festivals, and won multiple international awards including from HOT DOCS, FESPACO, the Luxor African Film Festival, Minneapolis St Paul’s Film Festival and the African Studies Association. Shameela has directed several programs for local and international television stations and civil society organizations and has also published widely on law and social justice in journals, newspapers and book chapters. She was the first in-resident film activist at the Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education in Cape Town in 2019, and served on several documentary film juries over recent years, including at the Sydney Film Festival and the Adiaha Women filmmakers Awards. AFRICAN MOOT, which follows four passionate law student teams from different parts of Africa as they compete in the largest human rights mock court competition on the continent, is her second feature length documentary.

The docLOVE programme is supported by the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme (PESP3) administered by the NFVF.