Sean is a complex South African screenwriter, creative and conceptual producer and intuitive documentary director, through his own Be Phat Motel Film Company and freelance for the international market. His slate of projects in development includes film and television for South Africa and the world and he is sought after as a development consultant and a creative and story fixer, at any stage from initial pitch and treatment, to scripting, to final edit and finishing.

His debut feature film Five Fingers for Marseilles premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, continuing to a long festival run and multiple awards including the Writers' Guild of South Africa's Best Screenplay award, multiple SAFTAs and the Best Film and Best Film in an African Language awards at the African Movie Academy Awards, where it garnered five in total. His recent Netflix smash hit Unseen was the platform’s most globally watched African film or television series in 2023, was the first ever African series to break into the global Top Ten with two seasons simultaneously and won him a Writers Guild of South Africa award for Best Television Screenplay. His South African-Nepali feature co-production Kathaa '72 premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival, and his shorts Sweetheart and the SAFTA-winning Apocalypse Now Now and feature documentaries Lost Prophets and Outsider have screened extensively at festivals. Upcoming projects include Bosryer (feature in development), Apocalypse Now Now (feature in development) and small-town-occult murder thriller Acts of Man (series).

As a story, creative and finishing consultant, his roster of African and international projects includes films from South, East and West Africa, notably Saloum and Tug of War, both of which enjoyed long A-list festival runs and multiple awards, as well as co-productions including Chinese-American drama Confetti and Punjabi-US indie The Scrapper, each of which have garnered accolades and awards at festivals the world over including TIFF and Berlinale, and/or found commercial success.

Sean is the founding manager of the Cape Town chapter of the shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival, which celebrated and awarded South African and international short films yearly for ten years, and he spent multiple years on the festival’s international executive & programming committees, pushing artistic collaboration and exchange between filmmakers from all around the world. He continues to be active in film festival planning and programmes independently for festivals including Encounters and Durban International Film Festival. He hosts panels on development, production, finance and distribution around South Africa and has served multiple terms on the Writers’ Guild of South Africa’s executive council. He is a Durban Film Mart and Durban/Berlinale Talents alumnus and a current Talents script mentor. He produced and hosted three seasons of radio talk show and podcast Space Life and Other Dumb Ideas, focused on science, technology and pop culture. Sadly, it seems science is not his calling; he’s resigned to live out his dreams of space through his work.

He is represented in Cape Town and Los Angeles.

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Sean Drummond

Director

Writer

Producer

Cinematographer

Editor

Editorial Department