MFA Directing/Screenwriting, Columbia University BA (Hons) Television Drama, University of Cape Town BA Film Production, University of Cape Town
Doha Film Institute Qumra 2025 Nederlands Filmfonds x NFVF Thuthuka Co-Development Fund 2025 Locarno Filmmakers Academy 2024 Doha Film Institute Series Lab 2024 Dakar Series Khaya Lab 2024 Series Mania Writer’s Campus 2024 Realness Institute African Screenwriters Residency 2023 AuthenticA Series Lab by Realness Institute, The StoryBoard Collective and Series Mania 2022-23 Columbia/MUBI Blue List 2023 Sundance International Narrative Filmmaker-in Residence at the Jacob Burns Film Center 2022 Sundance Institute Screenwriter’s Lab 2019 SFFILM Rainin Grant Finalist 2019 IFP Week Project Forum 2019 National Board of Review Student Grant 2018 Katharina Otto-Bernstein Thesis Film Fund Recipient ASCAP Foundation Film Scoring Workshop Selection Big Sky Edit Visionary Award Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective NYWIFT Next Wave Girls in Film South Africa Ambassador
Chantel Clark is a South African director and screenwriter working between Cape Town and New York.
Chantel is currently developing her feature directorial debut, Pale Faces with producers Cait Pansegrouw (Inxeba (The Wound), This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection) and Frank Hoeve (All We Imagine As Light, Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat), with the support of Creative Europe Media, The Nederlands Filmfonds, and the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa. The script was also selected for for the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab, IFP's 41st IFP Week Project Forum (now the Gotham), the Realness African Screenwriter’s residency, and was made a SFFILM Spring 2019 Rainin Grant Finalist. Most recently, Chantel was selected for the Locarno Filmmaker’s Academy, and she was invited to the Jacob Burns Film Center as the Sundance International Narrative Filmmaker-in-Residence.
Chantel is also developing a number of television projects and was a fellow in the inaugural AuthenticA Series Lab presented by Realness Institute, The StoryBoard Collective, and Series Mania, with her series in development South African Crime Story. Her series The Lost City, also in development, was selected for the Doha Film Institute's Series Lab, Series Mania Writers Campus, the Dakar Series Khaya Lab, and is the first South Africa television series invited to DFI's Qumra, which will take place in April 2025.
An MFA graduate of the Film Program at Columbia University, her short film, Our Albertinia, was awarded a 2018 National Board of Review Student Grant, as well as the inaugural Columbia University/Big Sky Edit Visionary Award and screened at over 25 international film festivals. She is also the recipient of a Katharina Otto-Bernstein Thesis Film Fund Grant and was selected for inclusion in the ASCAP Foundation 2018 Film Scoring program in collaboration with Columbia University. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Film and Media Production and her Bachelor of Arts Honours in Television Drama from the University of Cape Town.
Experimenting with time and collective memory, Chantel’s films exist at the intersection of the supernatural and the speculative. Framing fiction through historical research, her narratives play out parallel to significant turning points in South African History.
Chantel is a co-director and former ambassador of Girls in Film South Africa and a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective.
