South Africa and Germany / 2018 / 118mins / Action, Historical Drama / Afrikaans, Isixhosa and English

Told with the visual grandeur of a classic western, this senses-stunning epic recounts the life and legend of John Kepe, a Robin Hood-esque bandit who achieved folk hero status among black South Africans by robbing and outwitting colonizers in the 1950s. Forgoing dialogue in favor of dense, expressionistic sound design, Sew the Winter to My Skin is “a visionary work…[that] rewards patient viewers with its sensory riches and hypnotic rhythms” (The Hollywood Reporter).

Jahmil X.T. Qubeka

Jahmil X.T. Qubeka was born in South Africa and grew up in London. He was born in a Xhosa family in what used to be the nominally independent state of Ciskei. His fiction films and documentaries have been screened at international festivals, including at Cannes, Busan, Dubai and Rotterdam. Qubeka’s collaborations with Mandilakhe Mjekula have yielded an interesting body of work, from documentaries to TV dramas, commercials and corporate videos. They directed the 57 minute film Qula Kwedini – A Rite of Passage in 2003. In 2005, Qubeka won the American Peabody Award for a documentary about AIDS which he made for Sesame Street. He made his feature directing debut with A Small Town Called Descent (2010). Quebeka's controversial 2013 film, Of Good Report won the 2014 Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Film. He also 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. Learn More