Sheffield Doc fest accepts Kadandara
Kenya-based Zimbabwean award-winning pan-African director and cinematographer Nyasha Kadandara has been accepted into the Sheffield Documentary Festival’s Meet Market for 2021.
The Meet Market is Sheffield Doc Fest’s flagship pitching forum and it is set to be held in June this year.
According to Sheffield Doc Fest, 55 projects have been selected to present to industry partners at the 16th edition of the meet market.
The projects encompass a wide range of topics, themes, forms, stages of production (development through to rough cut) and are helmed by a mix of emerging and highly experienced and acclaimed filmmakers.
The meet market slate comprises 31 countries of production/co-production, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Côte d’Ivoire, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SA R China, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Lebanon, Martinique, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Zimbabwe.
Kadandara tells stories that traverse the continent and reflect alternative voices. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School.
In 2015, her first film Through the
Fire, about a recovering drug-user facing the demons of his past, won the Audience Choice Award for a short documentary at Atlanta Docufest.
Her short documentary Queens & Knights, about a gay and inclusive rugby team, won first prize at the 2016 NB C Sports film contest Cptr’d and premiered at South by SouthWest.
In 2019, she wrote, filmed and produced Sex and the Sugar Daddy, an extensive multimedia piece on transactional sex relationships in Kenya, which was a finalist for the One World Media Awards in the Popular Feature and Digital Media categories.
Kadandara’s latest work includes Le Lac, a virtual reality documentary which looks at the effects of climate change and the Boko Haram insurgency around Lake Chad. Le Lac won the Digital Narrative Award at Sheffield Doc Fest in 2019 and is currently on the festival circuit. And, her investigative documentary Imported
for my Body, about cross-continental sex trafficking was shortlisted for the Amnesty Media Awards in 2020 and selected for the Human Rights Watch Festival in Kenya.
Recently Kadandara served as a juror for World Press Photo’s digital storytelling contest and has been selected to participate in 2021’s Berlinale Talents.