Runyararo Mapfumo thought she was going to have a quiet year, researching and writing her first feature. But she is now in serious demand on the back of a stint directing episodes for season three of Net­flix’s Sex Education.

“My thing is to never say never, and there are a lot of great things to explore before I jump into my feature,” says writer/director Mapfumo, whose talent was picked up by Netflix producers after seeing her eclectic range of short films, in particular the BBC/Google Arts-backed Sensational Simmy!.

Her filmmaking ambitions began as a teenager when she and her twin sister appeared as extras in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. “I was more interested in what was going on behind the camera. I wanted to do what David Yates was doing,” says Mapfumo, who went on to study film and visual effects at Sheffield Hallam University.

Her decision to take a year out mid-course paid off when she took a job as visual effects assistant on Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity before working as a runner for VFX company MPC. “I didn’t know anyone in the industry, so it was about sending a lot of emails, and working a lot of overtime,” she explains.

After making short Masterpiece, which screened at the 2017 BFI London Film Festival, she worked as JJ Abrams’ assistant on the set of Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, shooting another short, Dawn In The Dark, during the five-day Christmas 2018 hiatus. “Being able to show [Abrams] a cut and ask his thoughts, you don’t often get that experience,” she says.

Mapfumo has already secured Film4 backing for her first feature Darkness Descends, “a character study crossed with fantastical sci-fi”. It is being produced through her own DessyMak Productions, which she set up initially to develop her short films but is now a home for other talent too. She is also developing another of her own features, music-influenced 1990s-set drama Sonny And Her Flowers. “I like to keep things varied and it feeds another creative side of me,” she says.

Contact: Christian Ogunbanjo, United Agents

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