Mbali Mashaba is a South African creative researcher, filmmaker and film curator. She completed an Honours degree in Film and Television studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and a film residency at Gothenburg University in Sweden. She is passionate about storytelling, nuanced representations of black life and shaping stories around the complex lives of women. She has experience as a student and indie film director, which has accumulated her awards and international film festival selections.

Her passion for storytelling led her to creating Behind Her Lens Visuals, a film curation agency, that provides accessible African diasporic stories to audiences, in order to bridge the gap between industry professionals, emerging storytellers and audiences through curated film screenings and their annual film festival, Reel to Reality Festival which she founded in 2021.

She was selected as a part of Africa in Motion's Emerging Curator Co-hort in 2022 and has worked with Durban International Film Festival as a pre-screener, in addition to co-curated events with Africa Rising International Film Festival and Encounters Documentary Film Festival.