Liza Key, who ran Johannesburg's boldest film festival, dies at 71
She led the Weekly Mail Film Festival, made documentaries and trained new screenwriters through her Scrawl programme.
Elizabeth Wilson
Johannesburg — Liza Key, a central figure in South African film, died on 11 October at her home in Johannesburg. She was 71.
Her work
- For seven years she directed the Weekly Mail Film Festival, transition-era Johannesburg's most exciting event. Its programme ran from banned anti-apartheid documentaries to international features and revived South African classics such as Come Back, Africa.
- She went on to make documentaries herself.
- She founded Scrawl, a scriptwriting programme that nurtured new writers.
- Her last work was research and writing for Mandy Jacobson's seven-part series The Trials of Winnie Mandela, recently shown on Netflix.
Colleagues remember a shy woman who could not speak in public, yet whose home was a perpetual salon of artists, journalists and filmmakers, and who brought humanity to stories of injustice. Her partner of 25 years is the director Janice Honeyman.
Source: Daily Maverick, 25 October 2026.
