Judi Nwokedi

Judi is a South African media executive and film producer whose career spans more than three decades at the intersection of broadcasting, television, and film. She currently serves as Executive Producer at Free Women Films (2016–ongoing), where she produced the feature-length documentary Music is My Life, chronicling the story of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, one of South Africa’s most celebrated, Grammy-winning musical groups. The film was South Africa’s official submission to the 96th Academy Awards and won Best Directing for a Feature Documentary at the South African Film and Television Awards in 2024, going on to screen at more than ten international film festivals. Nwokedi also executive produced Seconds, a feature film directed by Liese Kuhn for Amazon Prime and ETV, which she personally presented at the Moscow International Film Festival. She is currently developing several feature films, including the Italian–South African co-production Mama Hope, alongside Into the Mind of Dawie, a drama set in the Western Cape Winelands addressing fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. Her television legacy is rooted in loveLife, the pioneering national youth health programme she helped design and launch in 1999. As part of loveLife’s multimedia strategy, she was instrumental in creating S’camto groundBREAKERS, one of South Africa’s first reality television shows, a weekly series in which young South Africans spoke candidly about the issues shaping their lives. The show won the Avanti Award in the Youth and Children category in 2001. From 2001 to 2005, she served as Managing Director of Public Broadcasting Services at the SABC, overseeing SABC 1, SABC 2, and 15 radio stations, repositioning the portfolio into one of the broadcaster’s most profitable divisions. She also holds board positions in the film sector, including at Sithengi, the Pan-African Film Market.