Collin Oliphant
Prolific storyteller and one of South Africa’s most successful showrunners
Collin Oliphant
Prolific storyteller and one of South Africa’s most successful showrunners
Prolific storyteller and one of South Africa’s most successful showrunners
Prolific storyteller and one of South Africa’s most successful showrunners
Writer, director, and producer with a passion for film and television.
Sacha is a vibrant and creative storyteller with a passion for film and television.
She has a wealth of experience as a writer, director and producer. She has written a feature film, has developed several television shows, and has outlined and written scripts for many of South Africa’s most-loved dramas such as Legacy, Rhythm City, The Road, Summertide, Still Breathing, Home Affairs, Isibaya, Imbewu, The Estate, Empini, Inimba and Isidingo. She has also directed several hundred episodes of primetime shows, including Scandal, Rhythm City and Isidingo. Her short films have screened at several film festivals, garnering multiple awards.
Formerly, Sacha lectured film theory and directing as Head of the Directing Department at AFDA Film College, Cape Town. She also authored a book, Representing Aboriginality, a post-colonial analysis of the representation of aboriginal people in South African, Australian and New Zealand/Aotearoa cinema, which was published by Intervention Press, Denmark, and distributed globally.
Sacha has a Master’s Degree in Cultural and Media Studies and an Honours Degree in Drama and Performance Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, both awarded cum laude. She also has a filmmaking diploma from the New York Film Academy; completed a producing course at AFDA film school; an Independent Film Financing course through The National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa; and is an alumnus of the Durban Filmmart Institute Business Lab and the Berlinale Talent Campus.
Besides her career in film and television, Sacha is widely travelled and has lived on four continents. She is a wife and a mother, and is a dance, art and jazz enthusiast. She is also the founder and director of The Miracles Trust, a non-profit organisation which provides homes for orphaned and abandoned children in South Africa.
In 2024, Sacha established Inciting Incidents along with her long-time friend and creative collaborator, Collin Oliphant. Sacha brings experience across a range of disciplines, dynamism, creativity, and rich life experience to the collaboration. She is inspired to create compelling stories to tell the world.
Prolific storyteller and one of South Africa’s most successful showrunners
Collin Oliphant was born in Riverlea and raised in Reiger Park – a *coloured township established
under Apartheid’s Group Areas Act. His early education took place in township schools under the
Bantu Education system, which was designed to limit opportunities for black people. At the age of ten, he was sent to a Catholic boarding school, which provided an education outside of the state-run system and afforded him the opportunity for university access—a rarity in 1980s South Africa. His mother, who raised him in a single-parent home, made immense sacrifices to give him this chance for a better future.
Collin went on to study Mechanical Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand. After three years, however, the release of Terminator 2 changed the course of his life. He fell in love with the movies and, to his mother’s horror, dropped out of engineering to enrol in a drama degree.
In a career now spanning twenty-five years, Collin has created and co-created multiple hit television shows, including Bay of Plenty, Loitering in Jozi, Snitch, and Zero Tolerance. He has served as head writer for several drama series and soap operas and has amassed over eight hundred and eighty broadcast episode credits on national prime-time television. His work has earned several SAFTAs (South African Film & Television Awards) for Isidingo and Bay of Plenty.
Most recently, as head writer for Generations: The Legacy, he successfully guided the show through its relaunch and the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, ensuring it remained one of the top two most-viewed programs in South Africa with a viewership reaching 14 million.
Collin’s international experience includes a year in Los Angeles as a staff writer under David Mills on the NBC primetime drama Kingpin. He has also contributed to the international TV dramas Charlie Jade and Jozi-H.
In 2024, Collin founded Inciting Incidents with his partner, Sacha Stokes. His mission is to leverage his creative and leadership experience to mentor writers from disadvantaged backgrounds while creating innovative and impactful film and television content for both South African and global audiences.
*coloured – the preferred term for people of mixed race in South Africa.