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Oliver Schmitz

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Foto Oliver Schmitz

Oliver Schmitz

Biography

Oliver Schmitz was born in 1960 in Cape Town, where he studied visual arts, before completing his studies as a film editor in Johannesburg. In the mid-1980s, he went into exile in Germany, because – as a conscientious objector during the Apartheid regime – he was under threat of imprisonment. As a member of the “Film Research Unit”, an association of black and white filmmakers, he continued to shoot documentaries

and television films about the resistance against the racist rule of the white minority in South Africa. These include his first feature film MAPANTSULA, which he made covertly in 1987. Oliver Schmitz now lives in Berlin and works as a screenwriter and director for German television stations. With his “township gangsta” film HIJACK STORIES, he first attended the Afrika Film Festival as a guest in 2002. He presented his feature film LIFE, ABOVE ALL in Cologne in 2012, which calls for an end to the stigmatisation of AIDS in South Africa. His latest court thriller SHEPHERDS AND BUTCHERS about an executioner during the Apartheid era is based on real-life events, and the subsequent discussion with Oliver Schmitz about the film’s political background is sure to be fascinating.

Filmography

SHEPHERDS AND BUTCHERS (2016): Guest, Direction

Hijack Stories (2001): Editing, Screenplay, Direction

Life, above all (2010): Direction