Jaco was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artists award for Drama in 2008 and has won various other awards over the years including winning best director three years in a row at the Fleur du Cap awards (SA theatre awards). Jaco’s debut feature film GAIA, an eco-horror (winner of the ZEISS Cinematography Award at SXSW last in 2021), has sold to multiple territories by XYZ Films including the US (Bleecker Street) and the UK (Altitude) and formed part of Hulu’s Huluween event 2021. Before this Jaco directed multiple television series and made-for-tv films including 13 episode series DIE SPREEUS in 2019 which was nominated for Best Directing and Best TV Drama at the 2020 SAFTAs, RAGE (Showmax single film, 2020) and all five episodes of 4 MURE (KykNet 2021) which he edited as well. His most recent short THIS COUNTRY IS LONELY premiered at IFFR 2019. Jaco’s work combines the personal and the political with introspective enquiry and a radical formalism which seeks to critique controversial subjects without any attempt to solve the issues they raise. His most recent work was directing all 8 episodes of SPINNERS for Joachim Landau of Paris based Federation MEAC and Canal+/Showmax and the show is the first African series to showcase at CanneSeries. The show premiered on Showmax in November 2023 and has sold to multiple territories. Jaco is attached to direct a feature for Sunil Perkash (DIS/ENCHANTED). His most recent feature BREATHING IN – an adaptation of the play by renowned playwright Reza de Wet is a claustrophobic and haunting two-hander for producer Jorrie van der Walt and Kaapland Films.
Represented by David Kayser
DOWNLOAD CV