With over 30 years’ experience in broadcasting and many awards under her belt, Flora is always on a mission to uncover and mentor new talent, and to bring stories made by local filmmakers around the world to an international audience.

She conceived and ran Channel 4’s long running Unreported World, and was the founding commissioning editor of Witness, Al Jazeera English’s flagship documentary strand which transmitted to 280 million homes worldwide. While at Witness she commissioned, co-produced and acquired hour and half hour films, and launched Viewfinder for new filmmakers. Since leaving, she has run workshops for BBC Media Action with Libyan filmmakers, and acted as a mentor for IDFA Academy, East Doc platform, EsoDoc, Docs in Thessaloniki (with the EDN) and Medimed in Sitges. She is also a mentor for One World Media’s Production Fund.

Ragnhild is a Norwegian filmmaker and cinematographer. She has a distinct and brave voice in storytelling, and her intimate approach to the vulnerable characters in her films makes them open up and share the unspoken. Her film “Remember me?” was selected at IDFA’s student documentaries in 2016 and was part of the National Art Exhibition in Norway in 2017. It’s a strong portrait of young people who suffer from dementia, and their next of kin. Bergem’s film brings the audience closer to people who normally remain silent.

Ismael is a psychologist and a film director, and founder of Icaro Films. He creates digital content for online platforms, and has a strong interest in mixing documentary filmmaking with psychology, to achieve intimate and deep testimonies. He explores queer culture, its notions of body, community and the self. He was awarded Best Web Series in Popayan Short Film Festival 2015, first place for Audiovisual Piece in the Expresarte 2016 Festival; and Best Short Film, Best Director and Best Script in the 48h film project Bogotá 2016, achieving a special exhibition at Festival de Cannes 2017.

Jason has a Master of Journalism from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and an MFA from California College of the Arts. He is currently a fellow at SFFILM’s FilmHouse where he is developing a series of short docs. Jason’s artwork appeared at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and other galleries around the world. His first monograph, “I slowly watched him disappear” is in collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Stanford University. Jason’s short docs are generally character driven films which explore how seemingly ordinary individuals are living extraordinary, complex lives.

Zeynep is currently based in Istanbul and manages the New Film Fund since its foundation in 2015. She received her BA in Film and Television and her MA in Sociology, worked as a film tutor as well as a screenwriter, director’s assistant and consequently as a producer in film and media productions. She produced the feature length documentary “Beginnings” directed by Somnur Vardar in 2013 and is working on her debut documentary film “Come Rain or Shine”.

Elena is an emerging filmmaker from Germany who graduated in Documentary Practice from Brunel University London. She is working as a story producer for ARTE, ARD, RTL and SPIEGEL TV Wissen. Elena’s films focus on questions around education, working culture, love and ethnic conflict employing visual inspirations from the world of music and dance. As a director, Elena is a fellow of the Logan Non-Fiction Program in New York. Together with Alessandro Leonardi, she was selected for the BBC Fresh Award for her short documentary “Generation in Transit”.

Saila is a documentary filmmaker and multimedia journalist. She graduated from the Columbia Journalism School, and her work has appeared in The Guardian, Narratively, and GlobalPost. She worked in several conflict and post-conflict areas as an in-house filmmaker for Crisis Management Initiative. Her first feature documentary, Moroni For President, is on the festival circuit with a later public broadcast in the US. As a filmmaker, she gravitates towards stories about people who fight the odds and/or immerse themselves in something the rest of the world doesn’t seem to understand.

Amit is an award winning, internationally acclaimed photographer and filmmaker based in Mumbai. His photographs on the Travelling Cinemas in India won the World Press Photo, World Photography Award and Grand Prize at the Humanity Photo Awards. His film “The Cinema Travellers”, co-directed with Shirley Abraham, premiered as an Official Selection at Cannes Film Festival 2016, to a standing ovation, and won 18 awards. Amit’s work is supported by the Sundance Institute, MacArthur Foundation, Goethe Institut India, India Foundation for the Arts, Arts Council England, and the University of Heidelberg.

Born in the Edo State of Nigeria, Peter began his journey through life fascinated by filmmaking. He studied Cinematography at The Pencil Film and Television Institute, with a concentration in videography/documentary filmmaking. He later received a degree in Business from Lagos State Polytechnics. Peter’s love for filmmaking, particularly documentaries, continues to propel his passion for storytelling. He was one of the 10 people representing Nigeria at aKoma’s 2017 Amplify Fellowship for Africa’s storytellers and content creators. Peter works as a Director of Photography in the film industry in Lagos, throughout the continent of Africa and overseas.

Anders holds a BA in Political Science and is currently completing his MA in Digital Journalism at Goldsmiths. He’s been working on documentaries for television since 2015, when he sailed around the world filming and producing the series; “Towards Distant Shores” for Danish TV2. He recently co-directed and filmed the award-winning documentary, “Manila High – Life in Company with Death”. Next to his studies, he is freelancing on various documentary projects and finishing a feature documentary with a Danish director, filming in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev and the UK. From Summer ’18 he will be based out of Beirut.

Based in Bogota, Hanz is a Colombian filmmaker and photographer devoted to the production of documentary images and stories. He’s been working with indigenous, peasant and Afro-Colombian communities for over 7 years. He has a deep interest in learning and nurturing his knowledge to take on new projects, adopting new narrative skills to keep on telling stories throughout the Colombian and Latin-American territory. He has won documentary photography awards in Colombian contests, and he is in search of strategies and communication tools to generate long-term projects with multimedia platforms.

Nancy has lived in Japan for eight years, during which she has worked for the United Nations and numerous non-governmental organizations. She recently spent time in Berlin, filming her documentary “The Little Girl and the House” —the story of one woman’s struggle to prevent her apartment block from being bought by investors. Nancy has filmed and photographed in 15 countries. She currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.

Mohamed is a filmmaker currently living in Turkey, finishing two BA degrees in Film & TV and Motion Design. He did a short term study in Kent University in Film Studies. Mohamed has worked on various projects and sets for TV shows, short films, documentaries, and music videos, and produced his own projects. He currently works as a director, writer, editor and cinematographer, and he is a strong believer of the guerrilla filmmaking style.

Annabella is a multimedia journalist and filmmaker from Berlin with a background in Politics and Psychology. She has lived and worked as a journalist in Europe and the Middle East mostly reporting about conflict, politics, migration, human rights and global economy. She has a passion for directing short films and creative documentaries and likes to explore new forms of storytelling. Her work was featured in Der Spiegel, Euronews, CCTV, NRT, stern, ZDF and 3SAT. Her latest documentary “From Kurdistan with Love” premiered at IDFA in 2017.

Angelos has twelve years of experience in the audiovisual sector, with a postgraduate degree in Communication Studies and a specialisation in documentary filmmaking. Since 2011, he’s been mainly producing/directing creative documentaries with an international potential. His main objective is to explore the potential of documentary form as a social impact tool. He participated at first edition of Emerging Producers at IDFF Jihlava, and he is spearheading DocRepublic – a documentary hub where digital storytellers and public dialogue will be inspired. Angelos is a Fulbright Artist Scholar (2016/2017) and an x-fellow at SFFS’s Filmhouse (2017) where he developed his current documentary film Far.Go.Bots.

Sein is an international award winning filmmaker from Myanmar. His documentary “Unsilent Potato” is well recognized in Myanmar and Southeast Asia, and he’s an alumni of “Talents Tokyo” 2016. He is focusing on making documentaries and short films about young people, women, education, child labour and human trafficking. Currently, he is working on his documentary “For Me and Others Like Me” which won “Docs Spirit Award” from Docs Port INCHEON in 2016, and Hoso Bunka Foundation Prize in 2017 at Japan Prize.

Nicholas is a director, producer, drone pilot, and writer at Folklore Films. Since 2015, he’s directed 10 short films in different regions of Italy. Nicholas has also been writing and directing an ongoing feature documentary about cycling in Kenya. His first short film “All-In” won Best Production in diaspora at the Kalasha International Awards in 2015. In 2017 he filmed 150 testimonial/TvC/short documentaries for the President of Kenya during the election campaign period. He was the head Aerial Cinematographer for the short film “Watu Wote”, which was nominated for the Oscars 2018 for Best Live Short Film.

Simon is a documentary editor, producer and director living in London. Simon graduated as an editor from the National Film and Television School in England. For twenty years he has worked on long and short-form projects for all the major UK broadcasters, as well as BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, HBO, A&E, Discovery and National Geographic. Genres range from crime drama-documentary to investigative journalism, and from lifestyle programming to observational documentary. In 2003, Simon received a BAFTA nomination for editing and in 2007, Simon was nominated for an Emmy award in Investigative Journalism for Hacking Democracy, a feature-length documentary that proved votes could be stolen from American voting machines. Simon is currently working on a follow-up.

Kashaf has 20 years experience in creating engaging, high quality content. As a filmmaker he directed the Real Da Vinci Code, one of the highest ever-rating factual programmes on Channel 4. He would later return to the channel as a commissioner responsible for Time Team, the most successful history brand on television. He took that experience on to Discovery where he worked across the EMEA region, developing new channels and commissioning award winning short form content. His love of international content led him to Al Jazeera English, where he commissioned and produced a range of series with a particular focus on digital distribution. As the executive producer at Breakthrough Media, Kashaf is responsible for the development and production of all film content, across all digital platforms. He works with strategy and digital insights to continuously evolve the content, whether it’s an Instagram film or an interactive documentary.

Paul has made films for broadcasters in the UK, USA and Europe as well as for Al Jazeera English. Paul’s work Made In Bangladesh about the clothing factory disasters won the Peabody Award and an Emmy nomination. He won the Royal Television Society award for his BBC film Rivals for Paradise about the war between the Vatican and the Soviet Union. In So Close So Far Away, Paul investigated an event from the Vietnam War that received the Cine Golden Eagle and the International Academy of Visual Arts Award for Best Documentary. His most recent film A Very Sicilian Justice won Best Documentary Short in the 2017 Manchester International Film Festival.

Dominique is an Executive Producer in international documentary and factual programming.  For many years she was Senior Commissioning Producer for the Witness observational documentary strand on Al Jazeera English, executive producing programming from Africa and the Middle East with a particular emphasis on developing young, regional documentary makers. She currently oversees all international output for the production and communications company Breakthrough Media.