Zimbabwean Wins Emmy With Sex Education

Zimbabwean television director Runyararo Mapfumo raised the country’s flag high when her production scooped the Best Comedy Series gong at the 50th edition of the International Emmy Awards.

The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry.

The prestigious award for Mapfumo was for her Sex Education series which airs on Netflix, an American subscription streaming service that offers a wide variety of shows, movies, anime and documentaries.

Sex Education series, created by Laurie Nunn, was directed by Mapfumo and Ben Taylor. It depicts the lives of students, staff, and parents of the fictitious Moordale Secondary School as they contend with dilemmas in their personal lives, often related to sexual intimacy.

The series features a cast that includes Asa Butterfield, Gillian Anderson, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, Connor Swindells, Kedar Williams-Stirling, Aimee Lou Wood, Tanya Reynolds and Patricia Allison.

Mapfumo took to Instagram to celebrate the achievement, sharing some of the new and old highlights behind the scenes of making the series which currently has 3 seasons available to stream.

In addition to the behind the scenes videos and pictures, Mapfumo expressed gratitude to the awards organisers and crew for their hard work in the making of Sex Education.

“We won an Emmy! Best Comedy Series! Thank you @Emmy awards and congratulations to our entire cast and crew. Directing on this show was a wild ride. One I will never forget.”

Mapfumo is famed for directing films Dawn in the Dark, Masterpiece and The Uncertain Kingdom. She was recently nominated for the British Academy of Film and Television 2022 awards under the Fiction: Emerging Talent category.