By EDITOR

In an era when artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the creative industries, one of advertising’s most prestigious awards has gone to a commercial that achieved its remarkable visual effects the old-fashioned way – through human ingenuity, craftsmanship and meticulous filmmaking.

For Cape Town’s Bev Wynne, founder and Executive Producer of Gatehouse Commercials, being part of the team behind the Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning Your Way Out for Coinbase represents the pinnacle of a 40-year career.

The commercial won top honours: the Grand Prix for Film Craft at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It’s also received a Primetime Emmy nomination, a rare achievement for an advertisement.

“Cannes Lions is the biggest stage in our industry globally,” says Bev. “It’s where the best advertising work from every country is judged against each other. Winning a Grand Prix, which is awarded to only one entry in each category, is genuinely considered a career high point.

“Our film won the Grand Prix for Film Craft, which is particularly meaningful because that category judges the actual filmmaking – direction, camera work and execution – rather than just the concept.”

Gatehouse Commercials, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, provided the production services that enabled the ambitious international shoot in Southern Africa.

“My role is as a service producer: I’m not developing the creative idea itself, but making it physically and financially possible to shoot here,” she explains. “Most of the work I do is facilitating productions that come in from overseas and turning their vision into a shoot that actually happens on the ground.”

That means overseeing budgets and schedules, sourcing local crew, arranging locations and permits, co-ordinating casting, and solving countless logistical challenges on set.

What distinguished Your Way Out from many other productions in today’s environment was its commitment to practical filmmaking.

At first glance, the commercial appears to have been created almost entirely using computer-generated imagery. It resembles a pixelated retro video game. In reality, however, almost everything viewers see was physically built and filmed.

“The agency gave us a strong no-AI mandate from the outset,” says Bev. “Even though the finished film looks like a pixelated video game, none of that was done digitally afterwards. It was all built and shot for real.”

Bringing that vision to life required remarkable planning and craftsmanship, including constructing two 80-metre sets, building and shooting miniatures, and filming on location in Cape Town – all physically crafted to create that video-game aesthetic in camera, rather than adding it afterwards.

The result is a film that demonstrates how practical effects can still surprise audiences in an age increasingly dominated by digital technology.

“It’s an enormous logistical and technical undertaking to pull off practically what most people would assume is done on a computer,” Bev says. “I think that’s exactly why it stood out to the Cannes jury in the Film Craft category, which rewards that kind of filmmaking craft and ingenuity.”

For Bev, the award is also recognition of South Africa’s world-class film industry and the highly skilled technicians and craftspeople who have helped establish Cape Town as a leading international production destination. “The crew base here has grown up alongside decades of international productions, so you’ve got camera, grip, lighting and production crews who work to the same standard as anywhere in London or Los Angeles,” Bev comments.

“Cape Town has become one of the most sought-after production hubs in the world for international advertising,” she says. “The light and landscape diversity is extraordinary. Close by you’ve got ocean, mountains, desert-like terrain and city, so a director can get several completely different looks without leaving the region.”

Bev’s own career began more than 40 years ago when she answered a newspaper advertisement for a ‘Girl Friday’ at a production company. After starting in feature films, she found her niche in commercial advertising, where shorter production cycles offered a better balance while still delivering the creative challenges she loved.

Looking back on Your Way Out, she is immensely proud of the achievement.

“I’m incredibly proud of what everyone accomplished,” she says. “This project proved that, even in an age where AI is transforming the industry, extraordinary results can still come from people building, crafting and solving problems together. That’s something worth celebrating.”

At a time when so much creative work is being generated digitally, Your Way Out stood apart by demonstrating that human imagination, technical skill and collaboration remain capable of producing work that not only captivates audiences but also earns the advertising industry’s highest honours.  

Watch the award-winning advert by clicking here.

And, to see how the advert was made, click here.

By KAREN MILLER

Hard questions are what occupy much of Rebecca Gore’s search for solutions to humanity’s pressing predicaments. 

They are questions about prisons and rehabilitation, about women whose lives have been shaped by violence and poverty, and about what happens when societies stop seeing the humanity of the people on the margins. These questions have found expression in the recently launched Behind Prison Walls: Unlocking a Safer South Africa, the book she co-authored with Justice Edwin Cameron and Sohela Surajpal. They have appeared as well as in her academic writing on subjects ranging from abortion rights in prison, and women who kill their abusers, to the menstruation needs of women behind bars. They have also set her on the path to becoming an advocate: she was admitted to the Cape Bar earlier this year.

“Chutzpah” is the word she uses when speaking about these hard questions and “not being comfortable with the status quo”, especially when it deprives people of human dignity. For her it is one of the values Judaism has given her: not simply audacity, but the willingness to challenge accepted assumptions. It is also a phrase that captures much of the work she has chosen to do.

Rebecca considers this particularly Jewish quality as central to who she is and the values she follows. She speaks of being inspired by strong Jewish women throughout history and of being raised with the importance of making a positive impact in the world. Her grandparents have been a strong influence, especially her paternal grandmother, whose commitment to lifelong learning, embracing eccentricities and taking ownership of one’s life continues to inspire her.

Law itself was not however Rebecca’s first choice. She began by studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at UCT, and being interested in social impact and justice long before she contemplated a legal career. An internship at the Legal Resources Centre and studying Transitional Justice drew her increasingly towards the law and the possibilities it offered. Her arrival as an advocate is the culmination of years of public interest work and academic research, including a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School. 

Her greatest inspiration in the law is Justice Edwin Cameron, who has consistently taken on seemingly insurmountable social challenges. Rebecca had the opportunity to clerk for Justice Cameron at the Constitutional Court and then was his legal researcher at the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS), the national prison oversight body.

Working in prison oversight during the height of the Covid pandemic took Rebecca into both men’s and women’s prisons throughout South Africa. Here she encountered overcrowded cells built for thirty, accommodating sixty inmates; inmates in prolonged solitary confinement, unsanitary conditions and neglect. She continued to reflect on the humanity and context of the range of people she encountered.

One memory has remained particularly vivid. Observing long queues of dejected people waiting to be processed before entering prison, dressed in their everyday clothes, she was reminded of the dehumanisation Jews have suffered over a long arc of history. She acknowledges the markedly different context, but the power of the image remains significant for her. It raises questions about how societies treat collective groups of people and what oppressive actions become possible when people are labelled and treated as less than human.

Her work has increasingly focused on women in prison. “What women experience in prison is a microcosm of what they experience in life”. Women inmates have lives shaped by violence, poverty and abuse. Some have engaged in sex work; some have acted as drug mules; and others have stolen food for their children. Women’s prisons have too often been designed around men’s experiences and fail to recognise women’s particular needs. A prison nurse once told her that women simply “become numb” with incarceration.

Alongside these stories are others that resist easy categorisation. She recalls meeting a thoughtful and ambitious woman imprisoned for murdering her abuser who was studying law through Unisa while serving her sentence. Women’s rights remain at the forefront of much of her thinking about prison reform.

The law that attracts Rebecca is not confined to the courtroom though she is drawn to the role of the advocate, to argumentation, the challenge of difficult cases and the necessary research that follows. She is equally committed to creating spaces in which difficult issues can be discussed openly. While many more women are entering the profession, she believes obstacles remain and that mentorship remains key. 

Rebecca enjoys long-distance running and, as a personal challenge, takes part in a marathon each year. Running is an opportunity to switch off, to explore her surroundings, and to think about perplexing issues. She loves books and films and describes herself, in a family of ‘numbers’ people, as the ‘word’ person. There is something wonderfully apt about that description. Words matter to lawyers, but so too do the questions that sit behind them.

Perhaps that is what most distinguishes this young advocate. In a profession often associated with certainty, Rebecca Gore remains interested in uncertainty, in asking the hard questions and accepting the ambivalence of many of the answers. She reminds us that justice is not merely about winning arguments or applying legal principles. It is about willingness to see the essential humanity in all people.  

Rebecca Gore’s papers and articles:

• Behind Prison Walls: Unlocking A Safer South Africa – click here.
• Rethinking Crime and Punishment – click here.
• Abortion behind bars women in prison have extra obstacle to overcome – click here.
• Carceral period poverty in South African prisons – click here.

By EDITOR

For more than two decades, Associate Professor Simone Honikman has dedicated her career to helping women and their families navigate the mental health challenges that can accompany pregnancy and early motherhood. 

As Founder and Director of the Perinatal Mental Health Project (PMHP), she has worked to improve the lives of thousands of women in South Africa while helping to shape maternal mental healthcare across the African continent.

A graduate of the University of Cape Town’s medical school, Simone’s passion for social justice began long before she entered the medical profession. Growing up in a middle-class family during apartheid, she was encouraged by her parents to question authority and challenge injustice. Witnessing the resilience of disadvantaged women sparked a lifelong commitment to improving their lives.

By the age of 12, she had decided she wanted to become a doctor and work in underserved communities. While studying medicine at the University of Cape Town, she recognised the emotional toll medical training was taking on fellow students and established a student advice and support centre that offered counselling and psychological support to students in distress.

After qualifying, she worked in the public health sector in obstetrics, paediatrics, internal medicine and psychiatry before managing the Khayelitsha Cervical Cancer Screening Project.

It was during this time that her life’s work came into focus. Research showing that one in three women in Khayelitsha experienced postnatal depression, together with the devastating suicide of a colleague eight months after giving birth, highlighted the urgent need for accessible maternal mental healthcare.

In response, Simone, and a team of midwives and volunteers, founded the PMHP at Mowbray Maternity Hospital in the early 2000s, pioneering an integrated model of maternal mental healthcare within the public health system.

Today, the PMHP is a nationally recognised organisation. Although based at the University of Cape Town as a founding partner of the Centre for Public Mental Health, it raises its own funding and continues to expand its work so that more women across South Africa can access essential mental health support. Simone comments: “PMHP’s achievements can be attributed to many extraordinary people – our small team, our long-standing volunteers and consultants, and the collaboration with funding partners and thought leaders from all over the country and the globe.”

According to Simone, South Africa has one of the highest rates of perinatal mental health conditions in the world. “Worldwide, about 10% of pregnant women and 13% of women in the year after giving birth experience a mental health condition, primarily depression and or anxiety,” she explains. “In South Africa this is even higher. We estimate that one in three women is affected by these conditions during or after childbirth.”

Pregnancy and the first year after birth can be a particularly challenging time, as many women face multiple pressures at once. Financial hardship, conflicts in relationships, the demands of caring for a new baby and others in the family, as well as other life stresses, can all affect a mother’s mental health and how she is able to manage her life. Without appropriate support, these conditions can have profound consequences not only for mothers but also for their babies and families.

“The importance of mental health is unfortunately often overlooked,” says Simone. “Mental wellbeing is crucial for the woman who is pregnant or has just given birth. When women experience depression, anxiety or other mental health challenges without the support they need, it can affect their own physical health and wellbeing, as well as their ability to fully enjoy and navigate early parenthood and manage stressors in their environment. Because the period from conception to two years is such an important time in a child’s development, ensuring that women have access to timely mental health care benefits mothers, babies and families alike.”

To address these challenges, the PMHP integrates quality maternal mental healthcare into existing maternal and child health services, particularly in low- and middle-income communities. The organisation supports pregnant women, strengthens public health services, partners with NGOs, and trains healthcare and social development professionals so that maternal mental health becomes part of routine care.

Its influence extends beyond South Africa. Through training, research and collaboration in advocacy work, the PMHP has shared its expertise with health professionals and organisations in countries including Lesotho, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Botswana.

“Our mission has driven us to share our expertise and learnings with others working with mothers across Africa,” she explains, “and we have benefitted hugely from innovative work being done across the continent and in other world regions.”

Simone’s pioneering work has earned international recognition. In 2014, she was elected to the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship, which recognises leading social entrepreneurs creating innovative solutions to society’s most pressing challenges.

More recently, she was granted a visiting fellowship at the University of Oxford, as part of the AfOx programme, which enables Africa-based researchers to collaborate with Oxford scholars and further strengthen research and innovation in their fields.

“This recognition has given me access to extraordinary, dynamic and innovative people, working across sectors, working on the African continent and elsewhere, to better the development of their countries,” Simone comments. 

From a childhood desire to make a difference to leading one of South Africa’s foremost maternal mental health organisations, Simone’s work continues to ensure that thousands of women receive the care and support they need at one of the most important moments of their lives.