On her first major Netflix production, Zoe Ramushu told her line producer she needed at least one woman in every department. The response was silence. Not resistance. Silence. As though she had said something unreasonable.
That moment is why Wrapped exists.
Ramushu, a Cape Town-based filmmaker and tech founder, has been shortlisted for the Impact Leadership Award at the Global Production Awards 2026, presented by Screen International.
The ceremony takes place on 18 May 2026 during the 79th Cannes Film Festival, running 12 to 23 May in Cannes, France.
Wrapped is a global production technology platform that rewires how the film and television industry hires, connects, and grows talent. It gives crew members visibility to showcase their portfolios, availability, and experience. It gives productions an efficient and standardised way of hiring, onboarding, and managing crew.
What the industry was waiting for
The search filters do what the industry never could: surface the right person, from the right background, for every department. In the first three days after launch, in South Africa, Wrapped received over 600 sign-ups. The industry had been waiting for exactly this.
Ramushu joins nominees from major studios and film commissions across Europe and North America. She is among the few African founders to receive multiple consecutive shortlist nominations at the Global Production Awards. The story has not changed. It has only grown.
Back on that Netflix set, her crew numbered around 120 people. The search for one qualified woman per department turned into weeks of phone calls, favours, and dead ends.
Natural extension
“The most common explanation I kept getting was not that people were opposed to hiring women. It was that they didn’t know any. One person told me they had worked with a woman in sound a few productions back. Finding her again felt like searching for a unicorn,” says Ramushu, who is also co-founder of Sisters Working In Film and Television (SWIFT) and sees this as a natural extension of her advocacy work.
They found her. They filled every department. But the cost in time and money was real, and Ramushu knew it should not have been that hard.
“Hiring in the film industry can be quite fragmented. It runs on spreadsheets, word of mouth, and institutional memory,” says Ramushu.
“The same group of people gets hired over and over, not always because they are the most talented, but because they are the most known. Wrapped exists to change that. To give freelancers the visibility they deserve. And to let producers hire from abundance, not scarcity.
“The industry noticed before the product was even finished. Wrapped was selected for the Berlinale’s EFM Startups at the European Film Market. It was the only African technology solution that year, presenting alongside established global platforms, such as Letterboxd, to an international industry audience.
“Every time we have shown the product to a client, the response is the same,” says Ramushu.
“Thank you. This is amazing. I can’t believe I’ve been doing it any other way.”
Years of work
A Columbia University graduate and Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford, Ramushu has over a decade of experience consulting on diversity. Her career, which she says is guided by her unapologetic Christian faith, has moved across law, journalism, filmmaking and now technology.
Her productions have earned award nominations, like the Student Oscars and BAFTAs, and landed on Netflix’s Top 10. Wrapped is a culmination of her years of work, passion and experience.
“When cameras were first built, they were calibrated for white skin, and the legacy of that still exists in something as simple as ‘white balance’. Technology is moving faster than ever, reshaping our industry and making it more efficient.
“In this process, women, Africans, and people of colour cannot afford to be users alone. We must be the architects,” she says.
Africa did not wait for an invitation. It built one. And it arrived at Cannes on its own terms.
