Yaeesh Collins|Published
The 2026 Hollywood African Cinema Connection (HACC) festival brings together a jury with experience spanning film-making, post-production, writing, criticism, law and immersive media.
This year's panel includes Kenyan film-maker and editor Louiza Wanjiku, Nigerian-born writer and lawyer Jerry Chiemeke, and US-based writer, director and producer Evette Vargas.
Louiza Wanjiku
Wanjiku is a film-maker and post-production specialist with more than 15 years’ experience in feature films, television, documentaries and advertising.
She edited Kati Kati, Kenya’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The film won the FIPRESCI Prize in the Discovery programme at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.
Her other editing credits include Country Queen, produced for Netflix and ARTE, Sketchy Africans and Bufis, which was selected for the Warsaw International Film Festival.
Wanjiku is an alumna of the African Creative TV Fellowship’s directing class. She is also a partner and the technical and partnerships director at the NBO Film Festival, and serves on the board of the Association of Film Editors Kenya.
Jerry Chiemeke
Chiemeke is a Nigerian-born writer, journalist, film critic, lawyer and marketing communications specialist based in the UK.
His work has appeared in publications including Die Welt, The i Paper, The British Blacklist, The Africa Report, Afrocritik, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Olongo Africa, The Lagos Review, and Culture Custodian.
His writing has been nominated for prizes including the Pushcart Prize, the Ken Saro-Wiwa Prize, the Diana Woods Memorial Award for Creative Nonfiction, Best Small Fictions and the Quramo Writers Prize.
He is the author of the short-story collection Dreaming of Ways to Understand You (2020), and the poetry chapbook Notes for Nnedimma (2019).
Evette Vargas
Vargas is a writer, director, producer and entrepreneur working across film, television and immersive media.
She co-founded Indigo Reign Films, a production company that produces films, series and podcasts. The New York Times named her an artist to watch, while Forbes has also featured her work.
Vargas wrote, directed and produced the short film Confessions, which won an audience award at Cannes. She sold her drama series Muses to TNT and has developed series for MGM, eOne and Shout!
She also executive produced, wrote and directed the digital series Dark Prophet, starring Henry Rollins.
Vargas holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film and television from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting from UCLA.
The festival will present 10 selected feature films, four of which were directed by women.
Festival information is available on the HACC website with screenings taking place at the Robben Island Museum Amphitheatre.
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