Jahmil X.T. Qubeka

Jahmil X.T. Qubeka (born 1979 in Mdantsane) is a South African film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has most worked on actions, crime, and drama films that tell the story of post-apartheid South Africa, and has won multiple awards, including best director at the 2019 Africa Movie Academy Awards.

Personal life

Quebeka was born in a Xhosa family in what use to be the nominally independent state of Ciskei. Although he was born during the apartheid era, Quebeka grew up in a relatively elite Black neighborhood, and stated that he "doesn’t have the weight of apartheid on his shoulders." He describes his father as a cinephile who constantly watched movies.

He states that Stanley Kubrick and Fritz Lang are among his biggest cinematic influences, but that he also enjoys comedy, especially Eddie Murphy and that 48 Hrs. is one of his favorite films.

Cinematic career

Quebeka's 2013 film Of Good Report was originally chosen to open the Durban International Film Festival, but it was announced to have been banned by the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa for containing romance between a teacher and a student, constituting what the board said was "child pornography", this decision was later overturned after an appeal by the producers of the film. The film later won the 2014 Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Film.

He won the award for Best Director for his action thriller Sew the Winter to My Skin at the 15th Africa Movie Academy Awards hosted in Lagos, Nigeria.

Speaking on his 2019 film Knuckle City, Quebeka says that he looks forward to mixing genres in his future films, and also talked about the "toxic masculinity" that exists in South African culture.

Reception

Guy Lodge for Variety praised Qubeka's unique attempts of telling post-apartheid South Africa's story in film making that is not solely based on racial segregation, but violence and patriarchal sexuality. The adoption of black and white sequence of images, as opposed to coloured was also highlighted as adding a positive uniqueness to the film Of Good Report. He summarized its review by stating "Jahmil X.T. Qubeka's striking but grisly feature swerves wildly from obsessive student-teacher romance into splattery horror."