When he was 19, he was a Semi-Finalist in the Chesterfield Writers' Fellowship originated at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment in Los Angeles.
Initially, he was accepted into a Master's program in Filmmaking but chose to shift his focus to Screenwriting midway through.
Coetsee also holds a Master of Arts Degree in English Literature which he passed with cum laude distinction from the University of Stellenbosch, where he authored a thesis on themes of identity in the 1970s East African travel literature of Trinidadian author Shiva Naipaul.
Additionally, he has a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Film Studies from the University of Cape Town and studied Filmmaking and Film Production at South African institutions, including AFDA (the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance) in Cape Town, and South Africa's oldest film school, the Motion Picture Academy at Pretoria Technikon (now the Tshwane University of Technology).
[11][12][13] Coetsee was the only filmmaker from Africa selected by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma[14] for its prestigious[15] Les Nuits en Or 2017 (Golden Nights 2017)[16] which saw him participate in film-related programmes in France, Italy and Greece, and receiving an award from UNESCO at its headquarters, the World Heritage Centre, in Paris for The Suit which was selected as one of the thirty top short films from around the world.