The French Institute of South Africa is proud to support REALNESS, a pioneering residency initiative presented by URUCU South African Production Company. REALNESS was conceived as a way of addressing a need for promising African film projects to be resourced and supported in the development phase in order to be competitive in the global film market.
Amirah Tajdin, 29, is a Kenyan artist and filmmaker . Feature film project: HAWA HAWAII. She graduated from Rhodes University with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Photography) in South Africa, was born and brought up in Nairobi and spent her teenage years in Dubai. She has since written and directed numerous visual pieces. Fluorescent Sin (2011) and His To Keep (2013), both short films, have played at over twenty fi lm festivals around the world with Fluorescent Sin garnering Jury Special Mention awards at the Zanzibar International Film Festival and Film Africa London. Her most recent co-directed short, Marea de Tierra (2015) premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight as part of the Chile Factory Residency. The film was also part of Sundance Film Festival in 2016 under the International Shorts Program. She currently splits her time between Africa and the Middle East balancing freelance commercial directing work and working on her cinematic projects.