The Producers
Rehad Desai - Producer & Director
Rehad Desai is a Cape Town-born filmmaker who returned from exile in 1990 and now lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Rehad has a Masters in History and began making documentaries in 1998. He formed Uhuru Productions in 2003 and has been the driving force behind the company ever since. He is also the Chairperson of the Human Rights Media Trust, formed in 2004.
Over the course of his time as a filmmaker, he has conceived and produced over 20 documentary films, many of which he has directed or co-directed. Six of these films have been feature-length documentaries, produced with significant international participation and have received critical acclaim and wide festival take-up. Rehad is the founder director of the Tri-Continental Human Rights Film Festival.
Anita Khanna - Producer & Writer
Anita Khanna has scripted and produced the company’s multi award winning documentaries (Born into Struggle, Bushman’s Secrets, Miners Shot Down). Anita Khanna produced and co-directed the Alexandra My Alexandra history documentary series and wrote and produced an award winning feminist drama series, Mating Game (SABC).
Anita has been a jury member at the Durban International Film Festival and at One World Human Rights Film Festival, Prague. She was the Outreach Director of the first satellite version of the Good Pitch that took place in Johannesburg in 2011. Anita is also the current director (since 2012) of the Tri Continental Documentary Film Festival and watches hundreds of documentaries each year to put together a programme that speaks to the most urgent issues facing southern African audiences with a view to developing new audiences for documentary.
Anita Khanna is also an award winning Impact Producer (BritDoc Impact Award 2015).
In 2018, Cape Town narrowly averted completely running out of drinking water. In a country sitting 29th on the list of water-scarce places in the world, this became a ghastly harbinger of things to come. The city council committed to take urgent action to protect the supply of water by enforcing a policy of limited access. Capturing Water follows the unfolding fight, led by working class activist Faeza Meyer, to overturn water cuts-offs, which are punitive to the Cape’s many poor and crowded dwellings. From the mayor self-financing crucial infrastructure to the communities living with sewage spills, and the campaigners fighting land developers that threaten the city’s aquifers, this expertly-crafted documentary exposes the lethal pitfalls of market-led solutions to the water crisis.