{"id":651190,"date":"2026-06-03T13:59:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T11:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=651190"},"modified":"2026-06-03T14:05:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T12:05:59","slug":"netflix-filmmaker-has-a-platform-to-save-jobs-in-south-africas-collapsing-film-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/651190-netflix-filmmaker-has-a-platform-to-save-jobs-in-south-africas-collapsing-film-industry.html","title":{"rendered":"Netflix filmmaker has a platform to save jobs in South Africa’s collapsing film industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cape Town\u2013based film producer Zoe Ramushu believes her digital platform, Wrapped, can save jobs in South Africa’s collapsing film industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform provides what she called South Africa’s only industry-standard method to search for film crews by skill and availability, while streamlining the hiring process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramushu has been involved in numerous short and independent film projects, including It takes a Circus<\/em>, Ka Lifu Laka<\/em>, Divorced at 50<\/em> and # That’sNotOk<\/em> which have been featured in film festivals in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It takes a Circus<\/em>, her very first film, was nominated for a student Oscar, and she was nominated for a student BAFTA for her second film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has a Master of Arts in African Literature and Cinema from the University of the Witwatersrand, with a major in legal studies, which she said influenced her eventual career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramushu credited this legal foundation for the drafting of a foundational code of conduct for diversity in film production, which had been implemented by major producers like MultiChoice and Netflix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also spent some time on a research fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in the United Kingdom until 2021, when she returned to South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Reuters, she said she created a diversity representation measurement tool for the journalism industry and consulted with some newsrooms on implementing diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, Ramushu’s production company received R4 million in funding from Netflix and the National Film & Video Foundation to produce six films developed in South Africa for the streamer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Netflix began streaming the original South African film Real Estate Sisters<\/em> in 2024, which featured Ramushu on-screen and listed her<\/a> as a production credit alongside director Reabetswe Moeti. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, Ramushu was nominated for the Impact Leadership Award for her Wrapped app, then still in its soft launch phase, at the Cannes Screen International Global Production Awards 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramushu told MyBroadband that the industry’s informal nature is a major reason why finding employment in the film industry has remained a struggle for many South Africans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She explained that many in the industry historically relied on luck, chance meetings, and word of mouth to find employment, or for producers to find the right crews for the jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The industry lost a lot of talent purely because they haven’t been able to be in the right place at the right time,” said Ramushu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African film industry bleeding jobs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Parks Tau, Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since 2020, South Africa’s film industry has struggled after the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition paused its film industry funding plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funding was mired in maladministration within the department, as well as a huge backlog driven by frozen payments and budget constraints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the film industry fought for the return of the DTIC rebates programme, only to be met with delays. Filmmakers said this wait had a devastating domino effect on the local industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simon Makwela, a representative of the South African Guild of Editors, told Cape Talk<\/a> in December that the loss of the DTIC rebate directly impacted 50,000 to 100,000 industry jobs in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The withdrawal of funding also forecast a wider collapse of film funding, including a major shift in private funding in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A lot of our media assets are owned by foreign entities, which is inherently a threat,” said Makwela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When your largest spenders in the local film industry are sitting in foreign markets, you do have to have some level of control to have an economic vessel to have that spending come back to South Africa.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, without the DTIC’s funding, investments in local film producers have dwindled, and the job market gutted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrapped brings producers and crew together<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Zoe Ramushu, founder of Wrapped. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Together with a team of developers in Cape Town, Ramushu created the Wrapped platform to help South Africans in the film industry find each other and employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our industry works very well, but it is extremely fragmented,” she said. “It is almost like a minor miracle how productions come together.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said that the key to Wrapped is that it provides a platform for industry members to connect without relying on chance encounters or word of mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The big barrier to entry in our industry is visibility,” she said. Film crew members can sign up to Wrapped, add their CVs, and update their pages with their skill sets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The platform allows production companies to search for skilled individuals based on any metric, such as location and availability, and hire them directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“For producers, there is also a matter of hiring from scarcity. Wrapped breaks that barrier down so that you are able to see everyone in the industry and hire according to what you are looking for.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another benefit for the platform is that Wrapped’s internal systems streamline the hiring process, which is usually handled by production company staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Once you are in production, the second process that is an absolute nightmare is getting the paperwork done,” said Ramushu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We simplify that. We have been proven to cut pre-production time down by 33%, and time is literally money.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrapped immediately saw more than 600 professionals in the film industry sign up to the platform in the first three days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramushu said that the company is now preparing for a global expansion to meet international demand for the platform. Demand, she said, was driven by the platform’s novelty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrapped uses a subscription model, where it charges monthly fees for production companies, saving them time and connecting them with talent quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, freelancers and agents can use the platform free of charge, thereby increasing their discoverability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

More photos of Ramushu<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Ramushu (left) and Moeti (right). <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cape Town\u2013based film producer Zoe Ramushu believes her platform, Wrapped, can save jobs in South Africa\u2019s rapidly collapsing film industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":651194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,16],"tags":[64613,2054,24594,105654,105653,105651,105652],"class_list":["post-651190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","category-software","tag-department-of-trade","tag-netflix","tag-parks-tau","tag-simon-makwela","tag-south-african-guild-of-editors","tag-wrapped","tag-zoe-ramushu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651190"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651494,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651190\/revisions\/651494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}