François Maree

BIOGRAPHIE

François Maree is a South African writer, director, producer and actor. He graduated cum laude from Stellenbosch University with a BA (Hons) in Drama & Theatre Studies in 2015. He co-founded the production company THOC (The House of Creatives) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2016. He wrote, directed and produced the critically and commercially acclaimed plays "Bacchus in Hillbrow" and "When Clouds Sing", which toured to prestigious theatre festivals (Aardklop, US Woordfees, Vrystaat Arts Festival) in South Africa in 2016 and 2017. He was accepted into the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema in Brooklyn, New York, in 2017 to pursue an MFA in Screenwriting, where Oscar-nominated directors Darren Aronofsky and Milcho Manchevski were his lecturers. He received the Made in NY Award in 2017 for screenwriting. His short film "Love. Thy. Neighbor." was screened at the CUNY Film Festival 2018 in New York City. He was part of the story development team at Park Pictures in New York City in 2018. He assisted Rudy Valdez on his Emmy award-winning documentary, "The Sentence", in 2018, produced by HBO. He worked on the documentary "Special Olympics: 50 Years of Changing the Game" for 728 Films and ESPN. His solo show "GUY" was part of the New York Theater Festival's Summerfest 2019. He won the kykNET Silwerskerm Film Festival Pitch to Us competition in 2020. The esteemed Hollywood film producer, Kisha Imani Cameron, known for her work at New Line Cinema and on Spike Lee's "Bamboozled", was his mentor during this time. An expert panel chose his film "The Vegan and the Hunter" as the winner. François wrote the screenplay and also directed and co-produced the film in 2021. "The Vegan and the Hunter" had its South African premiere at the kykNET Silwerskerm Film Festival in 2022. He was part of the writers' room for Infinity Films' television series, "Troukoors" ("Wedding Fever"), which premiered on Showmax in 2021. His screenplay "Unravel" has been longlisted to be developed in 2022 by Tekstmarkt, a collaborative scriptwriting initiative between the Netherlands and South Africa.

FILMOGRAPHIE