Joshua Trappler

Joshua Trappler (b. 1990, South Africa) is a film editor and director based in Johannesburg and a member of the South African Guild of Editors. He started his career working on SuzelleDIY, a breakthrough comedy web-series that aired on Comedy Central. The show won the award for Best Editing in a Television Comedy Series at the 2018 SAFTAs (South African Film and Television Awards). Trappler was an editor on Tali’s Wedding Diary, the mockumentary television series that was the first original Showmax production in South Africa, winning five SAFTAs in 2019, including Best Editing in a Comedy Television Series. He then wrote, directed, and edited the original feature documentary Rhythm & Smoke, which is a deep dive into a unique aspect of South African music and motor vehicle culture that aired on Showmax and received nominations at the 2021 Bokeh International Film Festival for Best Directing and Best Documentary. Since 2020, Trappler has worked with William Kentridge as an editor and video operator on installations and performances at the Wits Art Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (India), the Centre for the Less Good Idea, and for the series of Slade Lectures at the University of Oxford. He formed an integral part of the creative team on Oh To Believe in Another World, a film commissioned by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra to accompany Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony; Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot, the nine-part episodic series focused on Kentridge’s studio practice; and, most recently, The Great Yes, The Great No.