NZ: Before we start on our main questions, for people who weren’t at the One Park screening or haven’t seen Meat Thing — in your words, retrospectively, what is it?

I guess, in some ways, it’s a cry for help.

NZ: Do you want to tell me more?

What I do now to make a living - I hate it. I work as a DIT, offloading memory cards, managing data and colour pipelines for films. I’ve worked on big projects, but it’s still just that.

Last year, I was in a car accident. It could have been really bad. I remember thinking that if I died, I would’ve died as a DIT on a beer commercial. That would’ve been it. So I was like, “I don’t want to die a DIT. I want to direct. I want to actually make something”, and that’s what Meat Thing is.

NZ: Sometimes it's a tragedy that acts as the push towards greatness.

That’s why it is a cry for help. Because I’m like, come watch this thing. I invited everyone. I was like, please — I can do other things.

It was a good screening. I think you [Namrata] obviously were there, but it was packed. They played it twice. People were being turned away at the door. It was quite special.

NZ: It’s a testament to where you’re headed. Now that we know what conceived Meat Thing, what is it? What’s the story?

It’s about a butcher who carries a piece of meat that they’re going to bring to a friend they haven’t seen in a long time. And it starts talking to them — asking about its own importance, but also why the butcher doesn’t consider their job to be important.

Which, in a way, is a parallel to being a DIT. Offloading cards and managing data for a giant movie is really important, but it’s soul-crushing. It’s the same thing with this butcher — she doesn’t want to be that, but she does acknowledge that what she’s doing is important, even in a small way.

So even at the end of the film, when the person she brings the meat to is like, “this is beautiful, this is such a good cut,” she’s like, “it’s just meat.”

That’s basically it. It’s about being stuck somewhere, wanting something more, but also not acknowledging that what you’re currently doing is important.

NZ: In a way, the way we interact with it is new, because we have phones. It’s a new medium of storytelling — and world-building, I think. But it’s also equally important, because you’re putting something from your head into something that can be experienced again and again.

Yeah. And I mean, a tactile piece of art — it’s the same thing. It’s still an experience. A good piece of art, at least. Sometimes you’re just a spectator. But that’s true for both — tactile work and film. There are also just really shit movies.

NZ: Are there any non-film influences that constantly sneak into your work?

I’ve grown up playing so many games. Really weird, obscure video games. I love Disco Elysium. These are games that have really stood out to me, and that I’ve been trying to bring into my work. There’s another game called Promise Mascot Agency, where you run a mascot agency in a small town, [it’s] people in costumes hyping things up — but they’re all really weird. One’s just a giant toe, or like a ghost, or a bat that can’t see. just like really messed up characters. I think they’re so funny. I also really like Alan Wake because it feels like Twin Peaks. It’s set in this small town where all these quirky, strange things happen. People just hanging outside saunas, weird little moments — it’s all these vignettes you can sit with for hours. It’s so cool.

Fortnite is cool because of how mixed everything is. You can literally have so many different characters. They added the Nike Swoosh guy recently — it’s just cool how referential it is — there’s Back to the Future, Kill Bill, Sabrina Carpenter, Kim Kardashian — all in the same space. And Minecraft, Minecraft’s cool because you can romanticise life in it. You project onto it. You name characters after your crushes… that kind of thing.

MR: Alright, so getting into the work itself — is there a project you’re not ready to make yet?

There’s tons. I think I’m not ready to make a feature yet — a full-length film. There’s also a series I want to make. I have the ideas, and a basic story structure laid out, but I’m not ready to make them yet. I feel like I’m too young at the moment to make a series… It sounds like a bad excuse, but I think I need a few more years of life experience. And also a few years outside of filmmaking.

MR: Are there any directors that have done that that you know of?

I think there’s plenty. With a lot of filmmakers, there’s always something else they want to do outside of film. But film is this thing that keeps sucking you back in. I have friends who’ve moved into music, or other industries. I even have a friend who left film to become a cop. I’m sure they’ll be back, but that’s the thing — you kind of need that weird life experience before you come back. Otherwise all your films are just going to be about filmmaking.

MR: So do you know what your next project will be outside of filmmaking?

No idea. Falling in love, maybe.

NZ: How does being South African shape the kinds of stories you tell? Because you are quite cultured, and what you’ve consumed growing up has obviously influenced the way you make things.

Working in South Africa means existing in this strange film culture shaped by global, Western expectations, while also needing to respond to local realities. And the film industry here has to fight for its place — it’s not necessarily the most championed medium.

NZ: And you’re not really doing figuration or trying to tell overtly South African stories, which a lot of people here tend to do. Tell us more about that.

I think there are South African influences in my work — maybe in the way things look, or the way they feel. Especially in dialogue. The way characters speak to each other feels very South African. Specifically, very South African Jewish.

I tend to answer questions with more questions, and I think that’s a very South African Jewish way of speaking and writing — constantly circling something rather than giving a direct answer. So in that sense, that influence is definitely there. But I would like to make more South African-centric work. The series I want to write is set in the Karoo, and it’s about the weird things that happen there.

It’s just hard to articulate it all in short form. And I think people here often try to tackle too much in one film. It becomes like, “this is my one chance to say something, so I’m going to say everything.”

MR: If we read Meat Thing as a kind of commentary on despair — how comfortable are you with audiences misunderstanding your work?

That’s fine. Great. It’s not for them. My work’s not for everyone. If it was, it would be a Marvel movie or something — and it would probably suck a bit. I showed it to my mom and she said, “oh, I expected more.” and I was like, “okay, cool, that’s that”. I don’t even know what she meant. Maybe she didn’t get it, maybe she wanted it to be longer, maybe she just didn’t like it.

I also showed it to my Rabbi, who said they didn’t get it either. But that’s fine. It’s not for everyone. As long as there are some people who get it — or even people who hate it — that’s okay with me.

I’m not for everyone either, so it would be weird if my work was.

MR: There’s this myth that filmmakers always know what they’re making before they make it. How much of your process is discovery on the spot, and how much changes as you go?

I definitely knew what I was making when I was making it. But there are things that obviously change on the day, and that’s completely based on real-world factors. You can plan all you want, but sometimes things go wrong, you run out of time, or someone messes up.

For example, working with an actor — you might get a completely different performance than you expected. You can’t think of everything. And then you’re like, okay, we’ll go in that direction, and the scene changes a bit, the emotional beat shifts.

Or you find a new way of shooting something — through a reflection, or a window — and suddenly that changes how the scene feels. So I guess the more superficial things, like how it looks, can evolve. But the core idea stays the same. That’s also what low-budget filmmaking is, you have to make things work with what you have.

Originally, I wanted a train in the film, because the actor who plays Jo takes the train to work, and I liked the idea of it — the sound, the atmosphere. An empty train is really eerie. It’s supposed to be full, so when it’s not, it feels off. Like a New York subway, but empty. But we couldn’t do that. We didn’t have the money, and lighting a train is complicated. So we used a bus instead, which crashed into a pole. It was kind of amazing. There’s still a bent stop sign in Oranjezicht somewhere.

So, there were rewrites on the spot. But again, I still knew what kind of film I was making.

MR: A lot of contemporary filmmaking seems obsessed with clarity — clean arcs, clean meanings, clean endings. How do you relate to clarity in your own work?

I don’t think things shouldn’t be clear, but I also think some things don’t necessarily need answers. Even at the Q&A for Meat Thing, people were asking what things meant, or why I called it that, and it doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to explain everything. Sometimes something just looks cool. Sometimes it has multiple meanings.

Like, everyone has a job they don’t want to be doing — especially in your late twenties or when you’re approaching your thirties. I want Meat Thing to be relatable in that sense, but not overly clear.

As soon as things become too hyper-focused, it’s like they’re not really for anyone anymore. You start ticking too many boxes. I just think clarity doesn’t always make sense in art — it can get a bit boring.

Being told what to feel takes away a lot of the value. It’s easier, and more interesting, to show things rather than explain them. Not everything needs to be spelled out. You can obscure things, even through how you shoot them. If everything is completely clear, there’s no point in discussing the film. There’s nothing to analyse, it’s already been done for you.

Like with something like Avengers: Infinity War, you know exactly what happened. There’s nothing to unpack.