The Atlas Workshops is Marrakech International Film Festival’s vital industry and talent-development programme for projects in development, films in production and in post-production. Among this year’s selections of films in post-prod we find the feature debut by Zamo Mkhwanazi – a filmmaker we first noticed via her 2020 Sundance-preemed short Sadla (it was also showcased at TIFF). Her short before that, Red Rooster was selected for the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2016. Shot in Johannesburg in early 2024, Laundry will be dropping sometime in 2025. Here is the synopsis: South Africa, 1968. Khuthala hates the family laundry owned by his father and dreams of a life in music. But, as the apartheid government cracks down on Black business ownership, Khuthala is torn between chasing his dream of becoming a musician and fighting the injustice that threatens the business that is his family’s only means of support, and that is the glue that holds them together.
I had the chance to discuss Laundry with Zamo Mkhwanazi in terms of the setting, the visual grammar and musical components, how she drew from real-life and some of the challenges in mounting the project.
