Ameera Faber
Position: DFA Chair
Chair DocFundraising
Ameera is an award-winning EP, creator, showrunner and writer, business psychologist and executive coach whose career continues a three-generation legacy of storytelling. She is the founder of I Love That Productions, with over two decades in film and television, she has produced documentaries, factual entertainment, reality, and drama, while leading transmedia storytelling campaigns across Africa.
She is a non-Executive Director of the Durban Film Mart Institute, and has been a juror for both the SAFTAs and the International Emmy Awards. Ameera holds a Master’s degree in Business Psychology, two bachelors degrees and is completing a PhD in Conscious Business Ethics.
As the founder of Coaching for Women, she helps women, and creative leaders build sustainable high performance practices. She is also the co-founder of The Superhero Project NPO, and the author of several books exploring relationships within the film, television and entertainment industries. As well as a series of children’s book “Nunu Ruh- The Girl With Wings” exploring how kindness and ubuntu show up in our everyday life.
Amilcar Patel
Position: DFA Vice Chair
Chair Doc Advocacy / Co-chair DocLove
Amilcar is the Co-Chair of the South African Screen Federation (SASFED), Vice Chair of the Documentary Filmmakers Association (DFA) and a board member of the Support Public Broadcasting Coalition (SOS). Amilcar is committed to advocacy and policy work that protects and nurtures the rich and varied possibilities for the African continent.
With an academic background in LLB law, Film and Media studies, Political Economy and AI Policy & Ethics in Africa, her latest directed feature project in development explores the consequences and possibilities of emergent technology of the continent, for which she was nominated as Best Director by the Saxon State Ministry for Science and Culture (Germany).
Amílcar has produced projects dealing with land, memory, dispossession and spatial apartheid across three continents, has had her art and film work exhibited in London and Dublin’s Museum of Modern Art and Vienna’s Q2 and curated large scale culturally-focused festival stages across Europe. She has served several terms as a RCLA jury and is a Red Sea Fund and Dok Leipzig recipient, with her documentaries and episodicals shown across online and terrestrial platforms, garnering over 4+million views.
Hannah Schutte
Position: DFA Secretary
Chair DocComms / Co-Chair DocYouth
Hannah is a young filmmaker. She graduated with an Honours Degree in Film and Television Studies. Her short films have performed well in the local festival circuit, with her graduation film being a quarter-finalist in the FAME Shorts Film Festival at FAME Week Africa (2024).
Hannah will complete her Master’s Degree in Media Theory and Practice at the University of Cape Town at the end of 2026. Her special interest in documentary storytelling had her choose to use documentary filmmaking as a tool for her research dissertation. Her current documentary project “Zebra” (2026) focuses on how social media functions as a support system for rare disease communities in South Africa.
As part of The Cannes Lion’s Equity, Representation and Accessibility (ERA) Programme, she was selected by Open Chair to represent women in the creative industry from the Global South at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2025.
She works as a freelance content filmmaker, video editor and production assistant, as well as a Lecturer in the Humanities Faculty at The IIE’s Emeris.
Pearl Munonde
Position: Treasurer
Pearl has a solid foundation in production, having built her career by rising through the ranks and gaining extensive knowledge at each level. She is an accomplished Producer and Line Producer who has produced hundreds of hours of award-winning content for different broadcasters including SABC, Mnet, Mzansi Magic and Etv. Pearl has worked extensively on reality shows, studio game shows, drama, magazine shows, factual documentaries, music shows, educational children’s shows, corporates and commercials.
She sits on various boards such as SWIFT, DFMI, SOS Coalition and was Chairperson at SASFED in 2023.
She is passionate about paying it forward through training and mentoring young female filmmakers and has been doing so for over 10 years and has produced many great production personnel in the industry. She owns her own production company called NwaChasiya Media, which opened its doors in 2016. Pearl has a Bachelors’ Degree in Business Administration.
Tamsin Ranger
Position: Chair docArchive
Tamsin is a producer and Head of Production at Big World Cinema, where she runs the company’s business affairs function, managing rights and delivery for a slate distributed in over 20 African countries to partners including Netflix, Al Jazeera, BFI, BBC, Channel 4, and PBS.
She is Co-founder and Programme Director of the African Producers Accelerator (APA), a capacity-building initiative for six mid-career African producers, now in its second year.
As a producer her credits include Netflix-UNESCO’s African Folktales Reimagined (2023), Tug of War (TIFF 2021), Rafiki (Cannes 2018), aKasha (Venice Critics’ Week 2018), High Fantasy (Berlinale 2018), Rollaball (Encounters 2024), The Colonel’s Stray Dogs (Hot Docs 2021), Silas (TIFF, IDFA 2017), and over 150 documentaries for Al Jazeera English.
An alumna of EAVE Producers Workshop (2022), DEENTAL at Cannes (2021), and Berlinale Talents (2019), she has served on the board of the Documentary Filmmakers Association, and juries for the NFVF, the SAFTAs, Durban International Film Festival, Red Sea Souk, Docubox, and the Hubert Bals Fund.
Zanda Nosenga
Position: Co-Chair docLove
Zanda is a Festival Manager based in Bloemfontein Free State. Throughout the years, they have worked for various film festivals and organizations such as Heartlands Film Festival since the year 2022 as festival manager. They most recently worked for Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival as one of the venue managers in Cape Town. In addition, they were a part of the Durban International Film Festival Managers Residency in the year 2025 and subsequently went on to be a facilitator for the DIFF Screen Lab program in the current year where they moderated sessions on film critique as well as facilitating Q&As for the festival. They have further partnered with and facilitated for the Free State Arts Festival’s film segment by the name VryVlieks. Overall, Zanda Nosenga is an active member of the DFA and one of the organizers of DocYouth’s Ngamaandaawe Film Festival for emerging filmmakers. In summary, Zanda has worked in the industry wearing various hats which have given her a broad understanding and continuous learning while navigating the industry as emerging talent.
Godisamang Khunou
Position: Co-Chair DocShare
Godisamang is a Director and Producer known for Black Women and Sex (2024) that was made between South Africa, Nigeria and Zambia about the politics of sex for African women. The film won Best Documentary Feature award at the American Black Film Festival, and Best Picture award at Ant’Sary Documentary Madagascar. The film has screened in numerous local and international film festivals including the PAN African Film Festival and IDFA Docs for Sale.
She was one of the Directors from the global south for the Gender Unit for Feminism and Gender Democracy anthology, where they made a Documentary titled Daughters of the Tallest Tree (2026), which premiered at the Feminist Imaginaries Festival in September 2026.
She is the owner of Mogale Pictures, which is a production company that is focused on African feminism and the PAN African movement. Recognized as a finalist for Sanlam Women of the Future, Mail and Guardian 200 Young South Africans and Mandela Washington Fellowship. The company turned 10years old in June 2026 with an incredible slate of films, collaborating with filmmakers locally and across the African continent. She has benefitted from local and international Producer labs including Locarno Open Doors, FIFOI, Berlinale’s Visitor’s Co-Production Program, Creative Producer’s Indaba. Before she Co-founded her own titled film lab called Frames of Freedom in collaboration with Fame Week Africa which launched in August 2026.
Sifiso Nkosinathi Nobela
Position: Co-Chair DocShare / Co-Chair DocYouth
Sifiso is a South African filmmaker, producer, documentary storyteller and film-industry development advocate with over 18 years of experience. He is the founder of the Mpumalanga International Film Festival (MIFF), established to grow Mpumalanga’s screen sector by connecting emerging filmmakers with training, audiences, markets and international opportunities. MIFF has subsequently become the parent platform for several youth-development, biodiversity storytelling and industry-incubation initiatives in the province.
His documentary work includes Working While Black, which examines anti-Black racism in the workplace and on which he served as producer, co-director, cinematographer and editor. His screen credits also include Lianne, Pandora’s Adversaries and Every Day.
Sifiso is currently developing Who Pulled the Trigger, an NFVF-supported documentary investigating unresolved cases and the families left searching for answers. The project received NFVF documentary production support of R150,000.
Beyond his own productions, his work is increasingly centred on building the next generation of filmmakers. He has facilitated documentary training for women through SWIFT, developed young filmmakers through MIFF-linked programmes, and led biodiversity filmmaking initiatives connecting emerging storytellers with Mpumalanga’s communities and natural environment.
Still serving on the NFVF PESP Advisory Panel since 2023 and participating in international industry and documentary spaces, Sifiso brings together the perspectives of filmmaker, producer, trainer, adjudicator and industry builder. His mission is simple: to ensure that filmmakers outside South Africa’s traditional industry centres are not merely invited into the industry, but are equipped to shape its future.
“I don’t only want to make films; I want to help build the ecosystem that makes it possible for the next filmmaker to make theirs.” Sifiso Nobela
DFA Administration
Thea Aboud
Position: Financial Administration & Public Officer
Thea Aboud started her career in industrial engineering with Iscor, and moved to local, provincial and national government. She branched out into accounting, procurement and human resources and, after 17 years, decided to work for herself. She started Shacabanga Consulting, working as a strategist and capacity-building advisor and, in cooperation with New Horizons, facilitated Business Implementation Plans for local, provincial and national government, non-profit organisations and the private sector in South Africa and other African countries.
In a complete turn-around, Thea then ran a successful take-away / bakery / general dealer in the Eastern Cape, before she returned to Johannesburg in 2010 to set up the Writers Guild of South Africa, which she still runs as Executive Officer in conjunction with the WGSA Council. Among her other clients are the Documentary Filmmakers’ Association, the South African Screen Federation, Sisters Working in Film and Television, the Southern African Freelancers’ Association and the South African Science Journalists’ Association.
Thea’s strengths lie in organisational capacity building, system analysis, financial management, strategic planning and project management, and she has a sound knowledge of the Public Finance Management Act. As a writer, she has screen credits on a children’s programme and has also been a ballet, ballroom and Latin American dancer and trainer.