Unmissable Jewel Finding Optel comes to Showmax
Finding Optel premieres on Showmax this Friday, 24 October 2025, fresh from its European premiere last weekend at the BFI London Film Festival (LFF), billed by Variety as “awards season’s international launch pad.”
Teenager Claire Abrahams runs a lost and found service where she locates anything and everything that has been misplaced. When Optel, the community dog, goes missing, Claire must confront her brother’s painful disappearance in order to solve her biggest case yet.
Made as part of the Showmax’s first-time director slate to open up the industry in partnership with Joburg Film Festival, Finding Optel is co-directed by 25-year-old Mikayla Joy Brown and her 30-year-old brother Jesse Brown, who were inspired by Amélie, Wes Anderson and their childhood memories of their grandparents’ home in Montevideo on the Cape Flats.
London Film Festival (LFF) describes Finding Optel as “heartwarming … a quirky detective story that skilfully tackles childhood grief,” while Huisgenoot billed it as “an unmissable jewel.”
Finding Optel had its South African premiere at the kykNET Silwerskerm Festival in August, where the whimsical detective story received a standing ovation, a nomination for Paul Guyeu’s cinematography, and the Best Production Design award for Sumaya Wicomb.
Mikayla Joy stars as Claire, supported by an all-star cast that includes award winner Oscar Petersen (Joe Barber) as her father, SAFTA nominee Zenobia Kloppers (Fiela se Kind), Rodney “Rotas” Goliath and Sherman Pharo (both Arendsvlei), Maurice Carpede and Euodia Samson (both Summertide), Elton Landrew (Spinners, Carissa), and Omar Adams (Barakat, The Umbrella Men).
Award winners Quanita Adams and Dominique Jossie produced through Blended Films, which won four Silwerskerm awards last year for Hier.Na.
Finding Optel premieres on Showmax this Friday, 24 October 2025, fresh from BFI London Film Festival.
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