Since graduating with a Masters from Stellenbosch University in 2001, Jaco has created work that resists convention and easy categorisation. He’s equally at home in theatre, dance, site-specific performance and installation art, video and animation and film. 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. Jaco’s debut feature film GAIA, an eco-horror, has sold to multiple territories by XYZ Films including the US (Bleecker Street) and the UK (Altitude) and currently forms part of Hulu’s Huluween event. 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. Jaco is currently shooting his adaptation of Reza de Wet’s stageplay BREATHING IN with producer Jorrie van der Walt for Kaapland Films. Next up Jaco is to helm all 10 episodes of an original series, SPINNERS, for Joachim Landau of Paris based Empriente Digitale and Canal+/M-Net.
Represented by David Kayser
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