Did you make sure to enable to cached template loader[1]?

>Enabling the cached template loader often improves performance drastically, as it avoids compiling each template every time it needs to be rendered.

[1] https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/api/#dja...

What's cool is that there is a legitimate push to make Jinja a first class citizen in Django, with other third party templating engines being available via a new API.