Ekwa Msangi

Ekwa has written & directed several shorts, most recently award-winning comedy Soko Sonko (The Market King), recipient of the Ousmane Sembene Short Film Development award, which produced her newly released film Farewell Meu Amor starring Tony Award nominee Sahr Ngauja, and actress Nana Mensah of the famed series An African City. She is currently in development on the feature-length sequel Farewell Amor and received the Jerome Foundation Grant, Tribeca All Access Fellowship, Cine Qua Non Lab Fellowship, IFP/No Borders, and Sundance Feature Film Development Fellowship to that end. Ekwa has also written & directed several drama series for mainstream broadcasters in Kenya and MNET South Africa, including The Agency, MNET’s first-ever original hour-long Kenyan drama series. Ekwa was selected for the 2012 Focus Features’ Africa First Program and the 2016 Berlin Talent Campus. In the past Ekwa has been adjunct faculty at Tisch School of the Arts, as well as a recurring mentor in Mira Nair’s East Africa based Maisha Screenwriting Labs. Currently Ekwa is the resident educational instructor with the African Film Festival, and teaches Screenwriting at The New School and Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, Brooklyn College. Ekwa’s first webseries All My Friends Are Married launched to rave reviews, and she is in development on her first feature documentary about Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, along with her award-winning podcast African Cinema NOW! One of Ekwa’s key goals as an artist is to transform our society’s images and relationships with African cultures, and to empower African filmmakers in telling their stories.