Suidooster actress Jawaahier Petersen has created a short film which has been nominated for an award at the 1Minute Festival taking place this Saturday.
The festival invites 600 filmmakers to enter a 119-second long film, but only 100 films make the cut to be premiered.
Jawaahier, who is the daughter of theatre legend Taliep Petersen, says her short movie will be screened on Saturday at Ster Kinekor in Cavendish Square.
She says she wrote her film, called Listen, while she was stuck in traffic for one and a half hours.
“I was stuck in an Uber and just decided to write this script to a film I had as a vision inside my head,” she says.
“My film is called Listen and it is about a deaf couple trying to communicate but there is a door between them and this makes it even harder.”
The first-time filmmaker says she is excited to have her film nominated for an award – she was not informed what category – and wanted to raise awareness about sign language.
“I used actual deaf actors to play the main roles, I am so blessed to have actress Tracey Duncan, a previous Mrs Deaf SA 2018, and Llewellyn McDonald who is a former DJ.
“I wanted to shine a spotlight on sign language, which I think should have been made one of our official languages.”
Listen was shot two weeks ago at Atlantic Studios.
Jawaahier says she’s always had these ideas for films but was unsure how to go about making one so she decided to just “stay in her lane”.
“(But) after discussing it with colleagues and my husband, I worked on the concept.
“I never heard of the International 1Minute Festival before and so I went to research what it’s about.”
She adds: “The fact that this film is being played in Ster Kinekor on Saturday is such a big deal for me.”