Nicole Schafer (b. 1980) is an independent South African documentary filmmaker. Her acclaimed film Buddha in Africa (2019), about a Malawian boy growing up in a Chinese Buddhist orphanage, won multiple awards and was screened at festivals and broadcast worldwide. She previously worked in Malawi as a video journalist with an international news agency. Nicole is the founder of Thinking Strings Media in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands and holds an MFA in Film and Media Production from the University of Cape Town.