Mbali Mashaba is a creative researcher, film director and film curator. She completed an Honours degree in Film and Television studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and a film residency in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2020 where she lived and studied for 4 months at Gothenburg University. She is passionate about storytelling, nuanced representations of black life and shaping stories around the complex lives of black women. Her passion for visual storytelling and the lack of film distribution of independent work in South Africa led her to creating Behind Her Lens Visuals. She has experience as a film director, producer and editor with short films under her belt, which have accumulated local and international film festival selections and awards. She currently works in the Television commercial industry as a creative researcher and directors’ assistant and aspires to become a Television Commercial director in the near future.