Monica Garnsey is an Executive Producer in TV Current Affairs, specialising in international and hostile environment projects, currently working on films for October Films, BBC Current Affairs and PBS Frontline. She has directed numerous observational documentaries and current affairs films for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and elsewhere. She was awarded an Emmy for BBC’s Death in Tehran, an Amnesty International Media Award for Execution of a Teenage Girl (BBC) and a RTS Award for Help Me Love My Baby for C4.

Christopher Hird is a graduate of Oxford University, where he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He worked as an investment analyst in the City before becoming a journalist, working on the Economist, New Statesman and Sunday Times. He had a career in television as a reporter and producer before establishing Dartmouth Films, an independent documentary company. A leading figure in the UK documentary community, he was Chair of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival and the founding chair of the Channel Four BRITDOC Foundation. A former trustee of Index on Censorship, he is currently also a trustee of the Grierson Trust, the Wincott Foundation and the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Liliane Landor is the Head of Foreign News at Channel 4, responsible for maintaining and developing the programme’s foreign coverage. Liliane previously worked as Language Services Controller for BBC Global News – editorially and managerially responsible for all 28 language services on radio, TV and Online and 1400 staff in England and internationally. She started at the BBC as a producer/presenter in the French service. She was appointed Head of BBC World Service News and Current Affairs in 2006 responsible for all the daily and weekly journalism of the World Service in English. Under her leadership in 2008 her department won 10 Sony Awards – 4 Gold, 2 Silver and 2 Bronze – a singular achievement recognising the breadth and excellence of its journalism. She was born in Lebanon, educated in France and Switzerland. She speaks five languages.

Derren Lawford is currently Creative Director at Woodcut Media. He was previously at London Live, where as commissioner he oversaw a dozen documentaries working with the industry’s brightest new directing talent. He was also responsible for creating, commissioning and acquiring shows for Raw, an experimental late-night zone which gave TV debuts to a host of YouTube stars. Prior to that, as Head of Content at Livity he worked with Channel 4, Google and the Department of Health, and has also been an advisor to multi-millionaire YouTuber, Jamal Edwards. As Head of Programming & Scheduling at BBC Worldwide’s Global iPlayer, he helped launch in 16 territories, and in a distinguished decade at the BBC he worked as a digital executive producer on the award-winning documentary series Our War for BBC Three, was Panorama’s first multiplatform editor, and as a development producer helped to secure a raft of commissions for BBC Three Current Affairs.

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. 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 the Director of Global Short Docs Forum, and an Executive Producer and a mentor for the One World Media Fellowship.

Bruno has worked at VICE since 2007 and became the Editor of the UK edition of VICE Magazine in 2012. He is also the Managing Editor of VICE Magazine’s international editions. He has worked on numerous independent publishing projects and has judged several awards, including BJP’s Breakthrough Awards and Magnum/Photo London’s Graduate Awards.

Born in Melbourne, Australia and schooled in the UK, Jezza Neumann then went to a college of higher education to study business studies.  After completing this course he travelled the world for 3 years and on his return started in the television industry working as a runner for Catalyst Television on the Chelsea flower Show for BBC 2.  After various jobs with various companies he progressed from runner to Production Manager and in January 1996 joined True Vision Productions. 

Having a passion for Stills photography he took a keen interest in camera work and editing and over the years he honed his skills in those areas.  His first broadcast filming opportunity came with Eyes of Child as the hours required “hanging” with the families meant that the budget couldn’t carry a fully fledged Cameraman.  Since cutting his teeth on that production he hasn’t looked back, working under the guidance of multi Emmy and BAFTA winning director, Brian Woods.

China’s Stolen Children was his first film as director, and won three British Academy Awards.  He has since followed up on this success with a number of award winning films including the feature length War Child and the multi-award winning Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children. More recently his film, Poor Kids, had an incredible impact, leading to questions being asked in the House of Commons during Prime Minister’s Question Time and inspiring over 950 viewer comments on the BBC Blog pages, over double the previous record number.

Dominique is an Executive Producer in international documentary and factual programming. For many years she was Senior Commissioning Producer for the Witness, the observational documentary strand on Al Jazeera English, executive producing programming from Africa and the Middle East with an emphasis on developing young, regional documentary makers. She was also International Executive Producer at Zinc Network, a production and communications company specialising in social change campaigns, overseeing all international filmed output for online platforms.

Christine Garabedian is a Beirut-born Dutch-Armenian-Lebanese freelance film-maker based in London. She has made Documentaries, Current Affairs, Investigative and Factual Programmes for a range of broadcasters and specialises in films about the Middle East and Arab World. Since 2012 she has developed, filmed, written, edit-produced, directed and Executive-Produced films for BBC Arabic’s Close-Up series. Her latest film, ‘Goodbye Aleppo’, tells the story of the final days of the battle for East Aleppo in December 2016. The film won the 2017 Grierson Award for Best Current Affairs Documentary, and the 2017 Rory Peck Sony Impact Award. In June 2017 Christine won a New Ground Award from the International Press Council and the Next Century Foundation for her work on Syria, Yemen, and the Arab Uprising.

Jamie Welham is a producer/director and former newspaper journalist. Most recently he has worked on the Channel 4 documentary strand Unreported World. His latest documentary Africa’s Perfect Storm, following the aftermath of last year’s devastating mudslide in Sierra Leone, has been nominated for an RTS award. Previously he spent several years working with Ross Kemp filming in challenging locations for his Extreme World strand for Sky, as well as one off specials including Libya’s Migrant Hell, following the migrant journey through Libya and The Fight Against ISIS and documenting the Kurdish struggle for autonomy in northern Syria.

Ingrid Falck is an independent media consultant and freelance executive producer of global documentaries. Until recently she was Head of Documentaries at Al Jazeera English for several years, overseeing award-winning strands (Witness, Correspondent, Al Jazeera World etc), series and single documentaries from around the globe. She has nearly 30 years’ broadcast experience, including as a BAFTA winning director and a multi-award winning exec and commissioner. Her special interest is in understanding narrative and exploring meaning, messaging and semiotics in documentary storytelling, especially films about the majority world. She has worked with dozens of filmmakers to help shift the power-base of storytelling away from an ‘us and them’ approach and towards those who are agents and authorities in their own stories. She is currently writing a book on this subject. 

Rageh Omaar is ITV’s International Affairs Editor, where he is responsible for covering and providing analysis of major news stories across the world. He is also the presenter of On Assignment, ITV’s current affairs programme and he also anchors News at Ten. Rageh was previously a correspondent for the BBC, where he covered the second Gulf war from Baghdad and he won a Bafta and Royal Television Society Award for the BBC’s coverage of the invasion of Afghanistan, where he was the only western correspondent in Kabul with the Taliban when the city fell. He then left to report and present for Al Jazeera. He has also reported for Channel 4’s Dispatches.

Karen Wightman is an investigative journalist and executive producer, who is currently the Deputy Editor of the BBC’s flagship current affairs series Panorama. Most recent credits include the RTS winning Undercover: Britain’s Immigration Secrets, which exposed chaos, incompetence and abuse in a centre which is a staging post for detainees who face deportation from the UK and the BAFTA winning Teenage Prison Abuse Exposed, an investigation into the treatment of children and young people at the Medway Secure Training Centre.

Indy Vidyalankara is the founder of boutique music PR company Indypendent PR and currently Head Of Strategic Communications at music charities Help Musicians UK and Urban Development. She is a seasoned and accomplished former Sony Music Director Of Communications, Saatchi & Saatchi ad exec and PR specialist. With a career spanning two decades in comms in some of the most high profile companies including eleven years in publicity across BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 1Xtra with some of the biggest names in TV and radio, across some of the most loved television shows on the BBC, such as Strictly Come Dancing, The Voice UK, Children In Need, Eurovision, Comic Relief and The One Show.

Mohit Bakaya is Commissioning Editor, Factual, at Radio 4.

He takes lead responsibility for current affairs, politics, history, science, natural history and religion on Radio 4.  

He joined the BBC as a production trainee and worked on the Radio 4’s arts programme, Front Row, before becoming editor of Night Waves on Radio 3. He has also produced many documentaries for Radio 4 and Radio 3.

Angus set up Ronachan Films to help foster a tradition of documentary filmmaking of passion and commitment. His work has been shown and broadcast across the world – winning BAFTA, EMMY, RTS, IDA, PEABODY, COLOMBIA JOURNALISM and PRIX EUROPA Awards among many others.

See a selection of Angus Macqueen’s work.

Bec Evans is Head of Video Development at Dazed; she works across Dazed Media’s publications to direct, produce, programme and commission in conjunction with editorial and commercial teams. Bec’s productions champion diversity and queer identity. She is dedicated to supporting new talent through platforms such as the ICA’s STOP PLAY RECORD, festivals, industry awards and community projects. Previously Bec has worked on documentary productions for Netflix, Channel 4, the BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera as well as developing films in collaboration with El Colegio Del Cuerpo, Colombia and The Annenberg Foundation, LA. Exploring socio-political issues through the lens of art and creativity has always been Bec’s focus in order to keep enjoyment and education synonymous, and push social responsibility as easy and necessary.

Alex Hoffman is Head of Video at VICE UK, managing the documentary films and series across the network. Prior to this Alex was Head of Music, managing VICE’s music channel Noisey from launch and before that spent nine years at MTV, a tenure that included winning an NME Award for ‘Gonzo with Zane Lowe’ and running the rock and indie channel MTV2

VICE and Noisey UK have won a series of awards for its groundbreaking content, including most recently at the Digiday Media Awards where they won Video Team of the Year.

As a director, Alex has made a number of documentaries including ‘Hip Hop in the Holy Land’ which was hosted by Mike Skinner, the controversial feature ‘The Redemption of the Devil’ and films about the likes of Liam Gallagher, Skepta and seminal clubnight Bugged Out.

Sally Arthy has worked for Sky News since 2000 covering foreign news. She has worked in various roles for the company as is now the Deputy Head of International News. She spent 5 years running the Washington DC bureau and has travelled extensively on some of the world’s biggest news stories often in conflict zones and hostile environments.

Sally started her career in local radio and TV in the UK before joining the Associated Press. Born in London, Sally enjoys running and keep-fit.

Stephanie DeGroote is a Senior Producer at Sky News dealing with innovation, specials and long form content. She has been involved in Sky’s Ocean Rescue campaign, producing documentaries to highlight the problem of plastics in the ocean, activism to save our seas, and exploring solutions. Stephanie has worked at Sky News since 2004 and previously worked for ABC News in London and in Moscow covering conflict and regime change. She has won three Emmy awards, a Peabody, an Overseas Press Award, and spent a year in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship for journalism.

Laurence has worked at the Guardian for over 10 years. He was initially
an in-house video producer, working across a wide-range of international news stories, documentaries, interactives and investigations. He has won multiple awards for his work – including Firestorm, Fast Ice and Building the Bomb – and has filmed in places such as Antarctica, the Arctic, West and East Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and all across the United States. Laurence is currently a Special Projects Editor and oversees many of the Guardian’s in-house documentaries and multimedia projects – such as The Trap, The Tower Next Door and Beyond the Blade.

Chloe Gbai serves as the POV Shorts & Streaming Producer where she works to increase POV’s streaming viewership and, in 2018, launched POV Shorts, which earned POV it’s third documentary short Oscar nomination. Prior to her work in public media, Chloe was an inaugural member of Teen Vogue’s video team where she worked as a writer/producer, launching two online news shows for the brand, which were viewed over 28 million times in the first six months it was released. She received her B.A. from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and as a filmmaker, her work has appeared on Teen Vogue, HBO, VH1, Logo TV and been chosen as a Vimeo staff pick. She is a New York native and proud to say that she grew up on channel 13, WNET. 

Matt is a Senior Foreign News Editor at Sky News, responsible for the day-to-day management of the network’s award-winning foreign news teams around the world. Hereturned to Sky in 2012 as Senior Foreign Planning Producer after working for World Newsgathering at the BBC, where he spent time at the World Service and as Special Events Producer.

Janine Gibson is an assistant editor at the Financial Times. Previously she was Editor-in-Chief of BuzzFeed UK, running the news team in London and overseeing all editorial content from September 2015 to January 2019. Under her editorship the team won News Website of the Year at the 2017 UK Press Awards. Prior to BuzzFeed, she was deputy editor of the Guardian, most notably launching The Guardian US in 2013 and overseeing its Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting of the Edward Snowden leaks. Her other roles at The Guardian included Media Editor and Editor of theguardian.com.

Shanida is an award-winning commissioning editor and Executive Producer, working across documentary film, podcasts and audio. Her work spans Asst. Multimedia Editor at The Guardian, commissioning and acquiring short documentary films and audio series for one of the world’s most read and trusted English language news sources. Prior, Shanida was part of the STORYVILLE team, the BBC’s flagship feature documentary strand. Shanida developed and produced AFTERWORDS, an audio series that puts the ideas of great writers in dialogue with contemporary writers, academics and activists, for Falling Tree Productions and BBC radio.

Judy Kibinge is a writer and filmmaker who began her career in advertising. She walks a fine line between fiction and documentary. In 2013, she founded DOCUBOX, East Africa’s first homegrown film fund which supports a growing community of talented,  independent filmmakers with funding, workshops, screenings, community space and hugs.

Solomon Mugera is the BBC’s Head of Journalism for Africa. He oversees the managerial and editorial direction of 12 BBC Africa language services, Digital and TV programmes with a combined weekly audience of nearly 100 million. He leads an award winning team that’s spread across various locations in Africa and London. Solomon has been instrumental in transforming BBC Africa from being a heavily radio focussed broadcaster to a multimedia operation. Over the past three years, he led the expansion of BBC Africa following new funding by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The expansion, the biggest since the 1940s, has delivered six new language services, enhanced digital development, investment in seven new TV programmes and the establishment of two multimedia production studios in Kenya and Nigeria. Solomon is a Kenyan journalist with more than 25 years of experience in broadcasting. He holds a MA in Media Management.

Arthur Pratt is a Sierra Leonean filmmaker and community leader based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Arthur is a co-founder of the Sierra Leone Film Council, the country’s first media-makers’ union. He has started and leads multiple community film and theater groups, collaboratively writing and performing films and plays. He is a co-founder and manager of the WeOwnTv program in Sierra Leone with numerous credits and awards for the films and plays he has produced. Film credits include; SURVIVORS (2018, Co-Director) which was broadcast on the PBS award winning series POV and was nominated for Peabody and Emmy awards in 2019, Charity (2010, Writer, Director), which revived festival awards at the Pan African Film Festival Los Angeles, Cinema by the Bay San Francisco, Semana del Cine Experimental de Madrid, Black Sugar (2011, Director, Writer, Camera), They Resisted (2011, Director, Writer), Hustler (2011, Director, Writer, Camera), Gift of My Eyes (2012, Filmmaker, Editor), M’Pora (2012, Camera, Editor).

Rawya Rageh is an Amnesty International Senior Crisis Advisor tasked with investigating and documenting war crimes and human rights abuses in crises. Prior to that, Rageh was a journalist for 15 years, covering the Middle East and Africa for the Associated Press and Al Jazeera English. Her work included covering the aftermath of 9/11 in the Middle East, the Iraq War, the conflict in Darfur, the Arab Uprisings and their aftermath, as well as the impact of the violence by the African armed groups, Boko Haram and AlShabaab.

Kate Holt is an award winning photojournalist; having trained in the News and Current Affairs department of the BBC before becoming a photographer. She has extensive experience of telling stories from very challenging environments. Kate has taught a wide range of organisations how to take photographs, write stories and improve their communication skills from African Union soldiers on the frontline in Mogadishu, to children in South Sudan.

Elena Horn is an award-winning documentary filmmaker from Berlin. Her films have appeared on The Guardian, BBC, The New York Times, ZDF, Youtube Originals and the French-German cultural channel ARTE, among others. Elena’s films focus on questions around education, working culture, reconciliation after genocide and climate change employing visual inspirations from the world of choreography and music. 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 debut documentary “Generation in Transit”. In 2018 Elena attended the Global Short Doc Forum and maintained a close connection to the organisation ever since.

Kiana is an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist based out of Kabul, Afghanistan. Her projects often explore complex topics such as migration, adolescence, identity and sexuality in war-ridden countries. She is a Senior TED fellow and a regular contributor to The New York Times.

Ruona Meyer is an Emmy-nominated, multimedia journalist with 17 years’ experience, across print, radio, wire agency, TV and digital outlets across Nigeria, South Africa, and the UK. She is currently a PhD candidate at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, researching the construct of networked power within African-Diaspora investigative journalism networks. Ruona’s investigative documentary Sweet Sweet Codeine gave Nigeria and the BBC World Service its first Emmy nomination (2019), winning the One World Media Television Documentary Award category and The BBC News Award for Investigation of the Year in June 2019. As a media trainer and consultant, Ruona works mainly with nonprofits; her most recent clients include the Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung and UNESCO.

Zoe Flood is an independent journalist and filmmaker with over 15 years experience. Her work ranges from covering breaking news events such as the ouster of Robert Mugabe and the Westgate shopping mall attack to producing long-form, multi-platform investigations. Most recently, she shot, produced and directed ‘Gamblers Like Me’ for BBC Africa Eye, which looks at the dark side of sports betting across Africa and was shortlisted for Best Documentary in the British Sports Journalism Awards. She was also part of the team that won the BAFTA for Best Single Documentary in 2016 for ‘My Son the Jihadi’. In a brief detour from her factual work, Zoe recently co-produced and executive produced the Zimbabwean romantic comedy ‘Cook Off’, which was the country’s first ever feature film to be acquired by Netflix. She also served as Chair of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of East Africa for two years, and is an elected Board member of the Frontline Freelance Register.

Nyasha Kadandara is a Zimbabwean director and cinematographer. She focuses on visually documenting a broad spectrum of subjects including breaking news, climate change, education, migration, health, and conflict in various parts of Africa. Nyasha holds a master’s degree in journalism and documentary filmmaking from Columbia Journalism School.

In 2015, she directed the award-winning documentary “Through the Fire” which premiered at DOC NYC and won the Audience Choice Documentary Short Award at the Atlanta Docufest. Her short documentary “Queens & Knights” won first prize at the 2016 NBC Sports film contest Cptr’d and premiered at South by SouthWest Film Festival. In 2019, she wrote, filmed and produced “Sex and the Sugar Daddy” an extensive multimedia piece on transactional sex relationships in Kenya which was a finalist for the One World Media Awards in the Popular Feature and Digital Media categories. Her virtual reality documentary, “Le Lac” premiered at the 2019 Sheffield Doc/Fest and won the Best Digital Narrative Award, and currently on the festival circuit recently selected for the Hotdocs Film Festival in Canada.

Most recently, Nyasha directed the feature broadcast documentary “Imported for my Body” for BBC Africa Eye. She also serves as secretary of the Foreign Correspondents Association of East Africa where pushes for press freedom and curates monthly documentary screenings.

Mustafa Khalili is a multi-award filmmaker and photographer with close to ​20 years’ experience in an ever changing media landscape. A cross-platform story teller with extensive hands on experience ​in directing and producing ​award winning ​documentary​ films and​ videos. Mustafa was the Deputy Global Head of Video and Audio at the Guardian and currently oversees Digital Documentaries for BBC News Arabic with a focus on producing current affairs and OSINT investigations about the Arabic-speaking world.

Sasha Djurkovic is a BAFTA nominee and Grierson and RTS award-winning director/producer and has been making observational documentaries for the UK and international broadcasters since 2005. She has a strong background in negotiating difficult access and maintaining long-term relationships with contributors. For the past 15 years Sasha has been directing and shooting award-winning television series for UK and international broadcasters such as: Brain Doctors and Protecting Our Children for BBC2, Our Drugs War and Liberty for Channel 4 and The People’s Health for Al Jazeera. Alongside this work, Sasha has also made her own independent film, Playing the Fool, shot over 3 years in a mental health hospital, which premiered at HotDocs in Toronto and Zagreb Dox Festival.

Toni Kamau is the youngest female African documentary producer to be invited as a member of the Academy for Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences – Documentary Branch, class of 2020. As a creative producer, director and founder of “We are not the machine Ltd”, a Kenyan based production company, she tells stories of outsiders, rebels and change makers.

Her past credits include half hour documentaries for Al Jazeera, MTV Europe and BBC Africa.  The Sundance special jury prize winner “Softie”, produced by Toni and directed/produced by Sam Soko, premiered at Sundance in 2020 in the World Cinema Documentary Feature Competition. “I am Samuel”, directed by Rory Peck 2019 winner Pete Murimi is her second feature as producer, and it recently had its world premiere at the 2020 edition of Hot Docs, to strong reviews. She is currently in production on a documentary feature exploring home and belonging and in development on a series that tackles decolonizing narratives about the global South.

April Dembosky is the health correspondent for KQED Public Radio and a regular contributor to NPR. She specializes in covering altered states of mind, from postpartum depression to methamphetamine-induced psychosis to the insanity defense.

Her investigative series on insurance companies sidestepping mental health laws won multiple awards, including first place in beat reporting from the National Association of Health Care Journalists. She is the recipient of numerous other prizes and fellowships, including an Edward R. Murrow Award for sound design, a Gracie and SPJ award for long-form storytelling, and a Carter Center Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.

Dembosky reported and produced Soundtrack of Silence, an audio documentary about music and memory that is currently being made into a feature film by Paramount Pictures. Before joining KQED in 2013, Dembosky covered technology and Silicon Valley for The Financial Times of London, and contributed business and arts stories to Marketplace and The New York Times. She got her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Smith College and her master’s in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a classically trained violinist and proud alum of the first symphony orchestra at Burning Man.

Rehad Desai started out in the film and TV business by producing and directing inserts for currents affairs shows over 20 years ago, garnering the necessary TV hours to take on more ambitious projects in 2000 he began producing and directing documentaries and his focus since then has been investigative, socio – political and historical genres. 

He has a Masters degree in history from Wits University. His prolific output has recently garnered him an Honorary Research Associate position at the University of Johannesburg. He is a fellow of the AVEA producer programme and has a post graduate diploma in documentary development and production from Eurodoc.

Rehad is known for his uncompromising approach both to TV and cinema, his directorial work has been critically acclaimed locally and internationally and is one of South Africa’s most awarded filmmakers. Awards include an International Emmy and two wins for best documentary at One World, Prague. His 2014 title Miners Shot Down garnered a total of 28 prizes. He has several SAFTAs for his drama and documentary work

He is a green fields producer par excellence and is famed for his ability to build multiple partnerships around his films not only among donor bodies but perhaps more importantly through co-producing among fellow producers and international broadcasters. This signals one of his stand out strengths so critical to filmmaking, the art of collaboration.

Roli is a Mumbai-based journalist with the Thomson Reuters Foundation and reports on gender, health, migration and slavery in supply chains, focusing mainly on India’s marginalised communities. In a career spanning over two decades, she has worked with major Indian newspapers including The Hindu where she was Deputy Editor and The Times of India where she was Editor, Special Projects. Her investigations have won her the Fetisov Journalism Award, Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity and a nomination for journalist of the year in Drum Online Media Awards. She was a speaker at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference, Hamburg, and is a guest faculty at media schools.