Robin Goode

Robin Goode came to filmmaking along an eclectic path through work as an agency art director, a sculptor, a photographer, and a video artist before turning his curiosity and artistic sensibility toward ads and feature films. As an agency art director in South Africa and Italy, he won Cannes Lions, a One Show Pencil, and South Africa’s top advertising honor, the Loerie Grand Prix. He then moved into the Italian art world, where his sculpture, photography, and video art were exhibited in Italy and Spain. It was in making video art that he fell in love with the moving image, and he went on to spend the next fifteen years directing commercials and writing and developing feature films and documentary projects. His ad work includes spots for Discovery, KFC, Jack Daniel’s, Telkom with Usain Bolt, FNB, ABSA, Standard Bank, MTN, and Sanlam. His film projects include his feature Rust Road (originally Free State), a neo-Western crime thriller set in present-day South Africa, now streaming on Prime Video. He is also completing Whispering Giants, a documentary about the conservationist Lawrence Anthony, the “Elephant Whisperer.” In his teens and early twenties, Robin was an actor, and that experience has stayed with him. Now, as a director, his love and respect for his actors and his ability to connect with them stand at the heart of his work. Whether it’s for advertising or feature narratives, his focus is to always look deeper, beyond the obvious action, to find the subtext that lives in the space between the lines. This allows him and his cast to bring honest integrity to every performance.