A Growing Thing

With only a 5th grade education, Jabulile Ndaba, a tall black woman with a contagious sense of humor, never thought of herself as a manager. Now she is a leader-in-training at a women’s project near Johannesburg. The project, Kopanang, enables women to earn money through embroidery -- and enables Jabulile to learn management skills. Jabulile is the sole provider for her large family. Her husband drinks away his earnings at the local bar. When Jabulile discovers that their teenage son has started smoking the highly addictive street drug “nyaope,” she determines to do whatever it takes to help him quit. Kopanang is run by an Irish nun who is training the women to run the project by themselves. When she announces that she will be moving to Australia, Jabulile and her fellow leaders are expected to take over the management of Kopanang: Can they rise to the challenge?

Director and producer. Filmmaker based in Berlin. Her feature length documentary Brown Bread (2014), a personal film about growing up in an interracial adoptive family, was awarded "Best World Documentary" at Harlem International Film Festival and is being distributed by Kino Lorber. Her short films have won awards, and she has received European MEDIA funding for screenplay development. Gross studied filmmaking at Harvard University and has worked as 1st A.D. on international productions in North America and Europe including the acclaimed German production Goodbye Lenin. She has dual nationality in the U.S. and Germany.

– San Francisco Doc Fest 2019  (USA)
– FIDBA 2020  (Argentina)
– Garden Route Film Fest 2020 (South Africa)