SAFTA winner Amy Jephta carries Beacon Valley to the world

When Amy Jephta walked onto the South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs) stage in 2022 to receive the award for Best Director for her debut feature Barakat, she was not only making history. She was also carrying Beacon Valley, Mitchells Plain, with her. 

Amy’s story is one of returning to her roots even as she has gone on to write, direct, and produce for some of the world’s biggest platforms, from Netflix to the BBC.

Now based between Cape Town and international film hubs, Amy, 37, now from Bo-Kaap, remains deeply shaped by her childhood years in Beacon Valley. Her memories are steeped in the streets, schools, libraries and friendships that formed her earliest sense of self and of storytelling.

“I was about six years old when I started at Imperial Primary School in Beacon Valley,” she recalls. 

“Every day, after school, I would walk from Imperial Primary to the Mitchell’s Plain Library in the town centre. My mother worked at the police station and only finished late, so those afternoons between the library and town centre became my world.”

For Amy, those hours surrounded by books were not just a pastime. They were a portal.

“I remember reading books and looking at the author's photographs at the back. I didn’t even think of writing for film then - I just wanted to see my face on the back of a book.”

Those walks also brought independence. As a young girl navigating her suburb on foot, Amy learned the rhythms of her neighborhood: the familiar shopkeepers at the town centre, afternoons spent at a friend’s house in Aintree Crescent, and the shortcut trails behind Beacon Hill High and Imperial Primary. 

“That was our footprint, our map of childhood,” she said. “Even my first ‘grown-up’ house party was across from Necro. These are the kinds of memories that stick.”

Amy credits Imperial Primary School and its former principal, Colin Baron, as pivotal in shaping her belief in possibility ("Street parade for Imperial Primary principal" Plainsman April 5, 2023). 

“There was always an emphasis on dreaming big and on the world being open to you,” she said. Many of her teachers remain in touch today, often showing up at screenings of her plays or films.

“That’s how invested they were in us as children. I don’t think I could have had that kind of education anywhere else.”

The late 1990s community she grew up in was defined by connection. “There was a real sense of neighborliness,” she said. 

“Everyone knew everyone. You knew the auntie next door, the people down the road, the kids you walked to school with. It was like a small village.” Only later, after moving to other parts of Cape Town, did she realize how rare that closeness was.

Yet growing up on the Cape Flats also came with challenges, particularly for a child hungry for theatre and film. 

“There wasn’t access to theatres or cultural centres in Mitchell’s Plain,” she said.

“To see plays, you had to go into town - to Artscape or the Baxter. That was one of the biggest hurdles for me: knowing there was a world out there but having to travel far to reach it.”

Still, the hunger remained, and so did the stories. Amy grew up surrounded by storytellers.

“My uncles, my aunts, my grandmother - they loved telling stories. Around the braai, on Sundays, on Friday nights, we bonded through storytelling. That’s where my love for theatre and film comes from.”

Her journey into filmmaking began with theatre. First came writing, then plays, and finally film. She was not one of those children making home movies with a camcorder; instead, she spent her time in books, notebooks, and her own imagination. “I existed in my head a lot,” she said, “and that was the beginning of my interest in storytelling.”

Today, that love has carried her onto the global stage. Amy has written, directed, and produced across theatre, television, and film. 

Her debut feature Barakat, not only won her the SAFTA for Best Director but was also South Africa’s official submission to the 94th Academy Awards ("Former Beacon Valley resident named best director at SAFTAs" Plainsman September 14, 2022).

She has worked as head writer on Catch Me a Killer, which premiered on Showmax, was writer and associate producer on Devil’s Peak on M-Net, and co-director of the upcoming iTV/Netflix thriller The Invisible.

Her career highlights read like a roll call of international collaborations: developing with Amazon, Fremantle, Netflix Africa, Paramount, and Federation Studios; writing for Trevor Noah’s Day Zero company; collaborating with Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment; and serving as lead writer and executive producer on Black Caesar’s Revenge, a global audio-anime project produced by Danny Glover’s Louverture Films.

She has also directed and written for Showmax (Skemerdans, Late Bloomer), penned the screenplay for Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story, and written for international stages such as London’s Royal Court Theatre and the Bush Theatre. 

Few South African creatives of her generation have straddled theatre, film, and television so seamlessly - or brought so many Cape Flats-rooted stories to the world stage.

Yet, she insists, the heart of her storytelling remains rooted in Mitchell’s Plain.

“For a long time, I tried to write characters that lived in America or London, because I thought those stories were more ‘universal.’ But later, I realized the stories I wanted to tell were about my people, my heritage, my place. Now, I carry Mitchells Plain with me everywhere I go. I’ve pitched shows in Hollywood about Portland, Tafelsig and Beacon Valley,” she said.

,“There’s pride in saying: this is where I come from.”

That pride is something she hopes the next generation of Mitchell’s Plain children will carry too.

“To kids who are growing up in Mitchell’s Plain, I’d say: look around you for inspiration. Your story and your voice will be shaped by the life you’re living right now. Be proud of where you’re from. Write stories about your own community, because there’s so much that makes it unique. Mitchell’s Plain has birthed incredible artists, thinkers and leaders - ,you can be one of them. Carry your heritage with pride, because it will take you further than you can imagine.”