Jessie Chisi


Jessie Chisi is a Zambian film director and screenwriter.

Life

Growing up in Zambia, Chisi attended the Durban Talent Campus in 2009 and in 2010 was accepted at the Berlinale Talent Campus. She was production assistant on Rungano Nyoni's 2011 short film Mwansa the Great.
In 2013 Chisi established the Zambia Short Film Fest, show-casing short films of 15 minutes or less.
Chisi's Berlinale pitch, then called Woman On Hold, eventually became her 2014 film Between Rings, funded by the Finnish Film Foundation. The story concerns Chisi's cousin Esther Phiri, Zambia's first female boxer, who was torn between marriage and career. It screened at the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival.
She wrote, co-produced and co-directed Imagination, about a young boy in Garden Township, Lusaka who dreams against the odds of becoming a filmmaker. She directed Season 1 & 2 of Zuba, Zambia's first telenovela. Recently, she produced, directed and wrote Remedy, a short film centered around the Zambian experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chisi lives in Lusaka, Zambia.

Filmography