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Wendy Bednarz’s “Yellow Bus,” which follows a mother’s quest for justice after suffering an unthinkable tragedy, won the prize for best film at the Joburg Film Festival during an award ceremony Saturday night at the Sandton Convention Center in Johannesburg.

The film, which world premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, is set in an unnamed Arabian Gulf country and follows an Indian family that endures a tragedy when their daughter is neglected on a school bus in the sweltering desert heat. Consumed by grief, mother Anada (Tannishtha Chatterjee) sets out to find the truth about who is accountable.

In its citation for the prize-winning film, the jury noted: “This film spoke to the core challenges faced by marginalized immigrants. The protagonist’s nuanced performance brought to light the resilience and determination needed when an individual faces a social-political system.”

Bednarz was not in attendance to accept the award.

Exclusive: The public television series Pov has acquired Who I Am Not, the award-winning documentary executive produced by Patricia Arquette that explores “what it means to be intersex in a binary world.”

The film directed by Tünde Skovrán will make its broadcast debut this summer as part of Pov’s 37th season on PBS. Pov, produced by American Documentary, is the longest-running show on American television devoted to independent documentary films. [Watch the Who I Am Not trailer below]

Intersex people constitute an estimated 1.7 percent of the population, according to the Intersex Campaign for Equality, which the organization notes “makes being intersex about as common as having red hair (1%-2%).” Yet, intersex people have been largely invisible in most cultures. Who I Am Not combats that invisibility by foregrounding the experience of two intersex people in South Africa, a beauty queen and a male-presenting activist.

‘Who I Am Not’

The documentary “reveals...

Gordon Main’s apartheid-era documentary “London Recruits” has been tapped as the opening film at the sixth Joburg Film Festival, which takes place Feb. 27 – March 3 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The film sheds light on a pivotal moment in South Africa‘s history, when the struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa developed a new secret weapon. Oliver Tambo hatched a plan to infiltrate young British activists into the country, posing as tourists. Their mission, in the face of brutal lockdown by the racist regime, was to help inspire ordinary South Africans to join a liberation movement that would never give up till freedom was won.

The film is produced by Jacintha de Nobrega (“Deep End”), Robyn Slovo, Geoff Arbourne, Colin Charles (“The Surveyor”), James Barrett (“A Change in the Weather”) and Felix Gill (“78/52″). As Variety previously reported, XYZ Films is repping the doc’s North American sales.

Earlier this week,...

For the millions of people who have sexual characteristics that don’t neatly fit into the typical definitions of male or female, life is a constant struggle against misconceptions, biases and cultural norms that, from the moment of birth, attempt to fit us into the box that defines our sex — and, often, how we’ll be perceived for the rest of our lives.

To explore that conflict, veteran Romanian actor Tünde Skovrán — making her directorial debut — traveled to South Africa to follow two intersex people with parallel but divergent lives: Sharon-Rose Khumalo, a beauty queen who suffers an identity crisis after finding out she’s intersex, and Dimakatso Sebidi, a male-presenting intersex activist who is in many ways Khumalo’s polar opposite.

The result, “Who I Am Not,” is an intimate, emotional portrait of intersex people living in a binary world, a reality that according to some estimates is experienced...

Doc previously had world premiere at Berlinale.

Under The Sky Of Damascus by Talal Derki, Heba Khaled and Ali Wajeeh won the Golden Alexander prize in the international competition of the 25th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, which closed on March 12.

The Denmark-Germany-us-Syrian co-production centres on a group of young Syrian women producing a play that lays bare the culture of misogyny and sexual abuse that has blighted their lives. The documentary had its world premiere in the Panorama section of this year Berlinale.

The Golden Alexander comes with a €12,000 and secures the place in the pre-selection shortlist for the Best Documentary Academy Award.