Showmax Collaborates With CANAL+ on Blood Psalms

By Vanessa Obioha 

A co-production between Showmax and CANAL+, ‘Blood Psalms’, will premiere on Showmax on September 28, 2022 with new episodes every Wednesday for 11 weeks.

Set in Ancient Africa, one thousand days after the fall of Atlantis, ‘Blood Psalms’ explores the story of the five surviving houses of Kemet as they find themselves beset with fears of a prophesied end of days.Bokang Phelane plays Princess Zazi, a fiercely determined teenage princess who must navigate primordial curses, long-standing ancestral vendettas, and her inexplicable role as the damning prophecy’s chief harbinger.  Mothusi Magano, winner of four SAFTAs and an African Movie Academy Award (AMAA), plays her father, mad king Letsha, while SAFTA winner and 2022 DStv Mzansi Viewers’ Choice nominee, Zolisa Xaluva (Gomora, Knuckle City) plays her lover, General Toka, the head of her father’s Akachi army. 

“Blood Psalms is the biggest and most ambitious series we’ve ever made, completely unlike any other African series you’ve ever seen,” says Nomsa Philiso, executive head: programming at MultiChoice. “We couldn’t be more excited.”  

“This show was specifically created as a reimagining of ourselves as Africans, as an answer to ‘Who are we?’,” says Phelane. “It’s done in a very entertaining way, with a lot of drama and action.” 

Show creators Layla Swart and Jahmil X.T. Qubeka from Yellowbone Entertainment were responsible for South Africa’s 2020 Oscar entry, ‘Knuckle City.’ The boxing drama was the most awarded film at the 2020 SAFTAs, where it took home six awards, including Best Director for Qubeka and Best Editor for Swart, and the most nominated film at the 2020 AMAAs, where it won two awards.

“What we’re trying to do is to reclaim the continent’s history from an African perspective,” says Swart. “Blood Psalms has elements of every African culture’s mythology and looks at various different tribes – the Akachi, the Uchawi, the Ku’ua, the Chini, and Great Nziwemabwe – as they migrated south from Kemet, which is now Egypt, and formed their cultures.”

Shot in the Eastern Cape, Gauteng and North West provinces, ‘Blood Psalms’ is a Showmax Original in partnership with CANAL+, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, the Eastern Cape Economic Development Corporation (ECDC) and the MultiChoice Innovation Fund.