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Exclusive: Showmax content chief Yolisa Phahle has revealed how co-producing with international partners has helped the South Africa-based streamer compete with fierce SVoD competition, as a first trailer for its epic fantasy drama Blood Psalms is today unveiled. You can watch it here below.

Blood Psalms, from creators Layla Swart and Jahmil X.T. Qubeka from Yellowbone Entertainment, is a big budget co-production with France’s Canal+ — the latest in several collaborations between the companies — and is billed as Showmax’s “biggest and most ambitious series, completely unlike any other African series you’ve ever seen” by Nomsa Philiso, Executive Head of Programming at the streamer’s parent MultiChoice. The fantasy drama, shot entirely in African languages, has touches of Game of Thrones, set 11,000 years ago in ancient Africa in a world of warring factions and magic.

The synopsis reads: “In Ancient Africa, one thousand days after the fall of Atlantis,...

From the very first scene of Blood & Water, viewers are pulled into the tragic story of the Khumalo family and their missing daughter. High schooler Puleng (Ama Qamata) has grown up under the shadow of her older sister, Phumelele, who was kidnapped at birth. Her parents are still grieving their lost daughter by celebrating her birthday every year and Puleng is distressed by their inability to let go of her sister's memory. Cue Fikile Bhele (Khosi Ngema), a girl Puleng meets at a party who has the same birthday as her older sister and a striking familial resemblance. Their meeting leads Puleng (and the audience) into a convoluted investigation into Phumelele's kidnapping and it takes all six episodes until we get an answer.

Though Puleng's meeting with Fikile sets the former into investigation mode, it's her father's arrest that gives her a proper start. Puleng's father, Julius (Getmore Sithole...

'Kick-ass' authorised biography starring Idris Elba expected to win plaudits, while troubled Winnie stumbles in its wake

As millions pray for Nelson Mandela, hospitalised for a week with a recurring lung infection, the race is under way to provide the definitive film version of his extraordinary life and times.

Leading the charge is a big-budget adaptation of Mandela's bestselling autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, starring Idris Elba, best known for The Wire and Luther, and Naomie Harris, recently seen in Skyfall.

Later this year it could go head-to-head at the box office with Winnie, featuring Jennifer Hudson as Mandela's wife, the struggle heroine Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, with Terrence Howard as South Africa's first black president.

The casting of foreigners has been controversial in South Africa and accents will be under close scrutiny in the latest films, which represent a transatlantic duel between Britons Elba and Harris and Americans Hudson and Howard.

British-born star picked to play Nelson Mandela in biopic after casting agent says local actors lack stature for role

Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, David Harewood, Dennis Haysbert, Terrence Howard, Clarke Peters, Sidney Poitier and now Idris Elba: all are actors who have been cast as Nelson Mandela – yet none is South African.

This is already a sore point for local performers, and now salt has been rubbed in the wound. Why do they never get the chance to play their national hero? Because they are too short, according to the country's top casting agent.

Mandela, a towering figure in every sense, is 6ft 4ins (1.93 metres) tall: actors in South Africa just don't measure up, says Moonyeenn Lee, who picked British-born Elba – star of The Wire and Luther – for a planned film adaptation of Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.

"I was free to cast a South African, and...