A cinematic journey navigating the nexus of capitalism, colonialism and tech, TIME HUNTER is a sci-fi documentary that blends verité and Afrofuturism. The film follows Mushiva, a Namibian hip hop artist and computer scientist living in Germany, and his cyberpunk alter-ego, the Time Hunter, a bionic spy dispatched by Black Africans to topple their colonial oppressors. By day, Mushiva works as an unassuming creative technologist in Berlin to support his family in Namibia, a former German colony. By night, during Mushiva’s music performances, the Time Hunter emerges. His mission? Extract the imperial tech used to maintain an oppressive technocapitalist world order and incite a social and cultural revolution through hip hop.
About The Team
Daniel Chein (Director/Writer/Producer) is an independent filmmaker whose work explores transculturalism and expressions of identity in the performative. Daniel has received support from Ford Foundation, The Sundance Institute, Field of Vision, ITVS, Princess Grace Foundation, Points North Institute, and SFFILM, and his films have screened at dozens of festivals. His short About a Home premiered at the 2021 Slamdance Film Festival and is distributed by Argo. His previous film Basha Man premiered at CAAMFest, where it won the Student Film Award. As a lecturer, Daniel has taught courses on cinematography, editing, and documentary filmmaking. He received a BA in Anthropology and an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University. He is a recipient of the Sundance Asian American Foundation Fellowship and was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2023. Time Hunter is his debut feature film.
Mushiva (Director/Writer/Protagonist) is a multidisciplinary creative technologist, inventor, and hip-hop artist from Namibia. He has a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction and is one-third of the award-winning hip-hop poetry group Black Vulcanite. Mushiva’s work incorporates novel technologies such as computer vision, sound synthesis, and robotics to access and project Afro-Accelerationist visions, the dangerous idea that suggests that a deep, rapid, and radical adoption of technology by African people can counteract the adverse effects of racial capitalism. Born in a war camp in Lubango, Angola where his parents were stationed as freedom fighters of the Namibian liberation struggle, Mushiva’s political upbringing informs much of his rap and poetry while influences of critical race and post-colonial theory, cybernetics, cyberpunk and technology design inform his creative practice. His latest work, Turbo Summation, brings these ideas to bear. Turbo Summation features a manifesto, synth inspired hip-hop album, music film, and home-made wearable instrument. TIME HUNTER is his debut feature film.
David Felix Sutcliffe (Producer) is a Sundance and Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and director whose work is rooted in racial justice. His debut film (T)ERROR premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and was acquired by Netflix. He was a consulting producer on QUEST (POV, 2018), and CRIME + PUNISHMENT (Hulu, 2018), a co-producer on 499 (Cinema Guild, 2021) and a producer on BLACK MOTHERS LOVE & RESIST (Array, 2023). His work has been funded by Sundance, Ford, Field of Vision, Catapult Film Fund, the Tribeca Film Institute, BBC Storyville, ITVS, and the Open Society Foundation. His films have been distributed globally and translated into nearly 20 languages. He was included in Filmmaker Magazine's annual list of New Faces of Independent Film, and he is a former Sundance Edit Lab and Creative Producing Lab Fellow, a Soros Equality Fellow, and a Pew Fellow.
