Cannes Market Dailies

UK based production and financing group Electric Shadow Company (ESC) and BAFTA Award-Winning  production company Rogan Productions are producing and financing the documentary miniseries Original Sin exploring the calculating murderer Gerhard Jansen van Vuuren, it was announced today by ESC’s co-founders John Jencks and Jay Taylor. After violently murdering his girlfriend Andrea Venter, when she was 25, in front of witnesses and CCTV cameras, and escaping prison twice, van Vuuren evaded the authorities across two continents for years, assumed three different identities and started families with several different women, before he was caught in 2020.

Director, writer and editor John Gutierrez directs this jaw-dropping true crime thriller. Gutierrez’s credits include editing the Grammy Award-winning Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream directed by Peter Bogdanovich and writing, directing and producing the Durban IFF Best South African Film Award-winning Sons of the Sea.

"I’m excited to embark on this docuseries with the Electric Shadow Company and Rogan Productions. Having an experienced team of creative producers like them will help to create a riveting true-crime series. I was interested in telling this story, not only because of my connection to South Africa but also because my family has wrestled with mental illness and violence for generations. It’s been a multi-generational struggle and one that has shaped me. Exploring the question of how traumatic environments can lead to violence and in extreme cases create a murderer, gives me insights into the psychological trauma my own family has experienced and that I still carry,” shared director John Gutierrez.

Produced by Sarah Laita and Jay Taylor for ESC, and Mark Hedgecoe, James Rogan and Soleta Rogan for Rogan Productions, Original Sin is an Electric Shadow Company, Rogan Productions and MultiChoice studios co-production in association with Combined Artistic Productions (CAP) and Red Earth. Filmed in Johannesburg, South Africa, Campo Grande and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Original Sin is a UK, South Africa, Brazil co-production. Currently produced as a miniseries, Original Sin has the option of being crafted into a feature film.

Producer James Rogan added, “We are delighted to be working again with director John Gutierrez and partnering with the Electric Shadow Company on this project. It is a shocking tale of abuse, murder and a flight from justice that reaches deep into the unresolved traumas that still haunt South Africa.”

With unprecedented access to many of the key characters, a mass of personal archive from both the accused and the victim Andrea Venter’s family, as well as news footage surrounding the 2011 murder and CCTV footage of the grisly event, the Original Sin production filmed the trial to document the dramatic courtroom denouement.

“John wonderfully reveals how van Vuuren, armed with his cunning and deception, unbelievably manipulated the authorities in multiple nations and maintained his freedom for so long. Interwoven in this clever, macabre cat-and-mouse tale is an exploration of van Vuuren’s upbringing. John takes the audience on a journey into van Vuuren’s violent childhood, creating insight into the making of a murderer and explores the influences of nature vs. nurture,” said ESC co-founder and CEO Jay Taylor. “The intimate exposure of his long-awaited trial will provide extra dynamism rarely experienced outside dramatized fiction. It’s an unbelievable story where truth really is stranger than fiction,” continued ESC co-founder John Jencks.

On May 2, 2011, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Gerhard Jansen van Vuuren stabbed his girlfriend to death in front of her neighbours and security guards. Everything on CCTV. But although horrific, that was just the start. Because this is a tale where truth really is stranger than fiction. Days before his murder trial, he fled the country to Brazil.  Upon arrival, he was arrested for travelling under false documentation. The South African authorities tracked him down, but before they could extradite he was mysteriously released, disappearing into another false identity. For seven years he was on the run, even starting a new family. But then the police in both countries pooled intelligence, and through inspired detective work tracked him down to a favela in Rio, where they arrested him and took him back to South Africa for trial. The gripping trial is underway in Johannesburg, with a verdict expected soon.