LONDON’S METFILM school graduate, Khulekani Zondi is celebrating after Queen Sono, Africa’s first Netflix Original series, premiered worldwide on Netflix this month.

Khulekani edited the series and attributes much of his success to London’s MetFilm School.

Originally a music graduate from Durban, South Africa he moved to Johannesburg to stay with his sister, to see if he could carve out a career for himself in the music industry. His performance credits include working on music for Maroon 5, Seether, One Republic, and Grammy award winning group LadySmith Black Mambazo.

For extra cash, Zondi had been dabbling with film. The 32-year-old managed to get a few jobs filming weddings and other functions. He really loved the medium and wanted to know more but wasn’t in a financial position to go to film school.

He said: “I was using the Internet and YouTube to teach myself; I think many filmmakers start that way.”

But even with this lack of experience he was approached by a friend (Ndaba ka Ngwane) to help him make a feature film.

Zondi said: “He came to me because he knew I had a camera, it was as simple as that.”

“It was crazy, we only had my camera. But, we persevered and made: Uhlanga (‘The Mark’).

“Uhlanga was critically acclaimed – it won five awards at the International Zanzibar Film Festival including, Best Feature Film, and Best Cinematography at the Africa Movie Academy Awards.

“This was remarkable, my first ever feature film and we won so many awards! I knew that film was my passion and that I needed to know more, so I looked online and I saw that there was an annual scholarship available, Voices That Matter at the MetFilm School in Ealing. So, I applied.

“The success of Uhlanga (The Mark’) gave me the confidence to apply and I was so happy when I heard that I’d won the scholarship, I could never have gone to that school without it -The Voices That Matter Scholarship was a life-changer for me.

“I didn’t realise until I got to the school that it was the home of the world-famous Ealing Studios, I told myself that this was a very special place.

“Before I started there I was really scared, I had never been to London before and coming from South Africa, where apartheid is not so far away, it’s not easily forgotten. I wondered whether I would be accepted. ‘You ask yourself because you are a black man will people accept you?’  Nobody cared that I was black, or that I was from South Africa.  I met people from all over, from China, Argentina – all were completely focused on making films.

“The thing I should have been scared of was how expensive it is to live in London. Everything is expensive – my advice to anyone looking to study away from home would to be to thoroughly understand the exchange rates and all of the costs – food, accommodation etc.

After graduating, Khulekani went back to Johannesburg to carve out a future for himself in the African film industry.

He said: “I did everything I could to get on film sets, I did all sorts of jobs – I didn’t mind being a runner. I just wanted to be close to the industry.

Eventually the spade work took off and I started editing, my first job was for a series called The Mayor, and I did a good job on that so I got more work. I won a SAFTA for my work on The Bantu Hour .

“I edited a couple of feature films and then the opportunity to work on Queen Sono came along.

“I think that the African screen industry is on the cusp of something big, there’s such buzz and we have the ability to tell our stories on large platforms. Stories that haven’t been told before.”

Entries are open for the 2020 Voices That Matter Scholarship in association with MTV Staying Alive please visit: https://www.metfilmschool.ac.uk/admissions/funding-course/voices-that-matter-scholarship-2020/  for more information.

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