Zoe Ramushu is currently flying the Zimbabwean flag high in the African film industry. The filmmaker’s debut feature film ‘Real Estate Sisters‘, which co-wrote with South African filmmaker Rea Moeti-Vogt, was released on Netflix on the 26th of April and has since risen to the number 2 position the top 10 trending list in South Africa.
It’s such an honour to be in the top ten films. So many films don’t make it past the idea stage, let alone getting made but to have so many people watching is amazing and we’re really grateful to God.
Produced under the Totem Zea Collective banner, a production company Ramushu founded together with fellow filmmaker Rea Moeti-Vogt, the film revolves around two broke but sassy real estate sisters going from selling rundown apartments to selling high-end homes. In addition to their roles as writers, Moeti-Vogt and Ramushu also occupied the roles of director and producer respectively.
Real Estate Sisters is one of six micro budget projects supported through a joint film-fund by Netflix and the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) of South Africa, as part of a push to promote diversity, representation, and growth in South African filmmaking. The film has two Black female leads, in Gina Koffman and Leera Mthethwa.
A Reuters fellow at Oxford University, Ramushu chairs a committee for the South African Department of Arts and Cultures, overseeing cultural grant allocations across national parastatals and agencies. She holds an undergraduate BA honors degree in Law and English and an MA both from the University of the Witwatersrand. She earned her MSc in filmmaking from Columbia University in the City of New York.
Some of the highlights of Ramushu’s career include being part of the production, To The Plate which was shortlisted for the BAFTA Student Film Awards and It Takes A Circus, that earned her a nomination for the Student Academy Awards.
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