The Switchboard and Consultancies room in Cutler's Hall is a space for you to meet one-on-one with experts in the field who can help you navigate the film industry.
Come prepared with specific questions and goals for your project. It's important to have a clear understanding of what you hope to achieve and what questions you need answered in order to make progress. This will help the experts provide you with targeted advice and recommendations.
Be open and receptive to feedback and suggestions. The experts you meet with will have a wealth of knowledge and experience, so it's important to listen to their ideas and suggestions. You may learn about new resources or approaches that you hadn't considered before.
Switchboard Experts
Bastien Gauclère
After a master’s degree in political sciences in Bordeaux, Bastien began at the French National Center for Cinematography (CNC, 2011-2012) and then joined an independent production company, AGAT Films & Cie (2013-2014). Between 2015 and 2017, they worked for the French Consulate in Jerusalem as audiovisual cooperation officer in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In 2018, Bastien joined La Fémis (French national cinema school) to coordinate various workshops and their TV series scriptwriting department. Since 2021, he has been in charge of the FIPADOC Industry Days, which gathered in 2024 more than 2.400 European professionals for an intense 4 days-program with more than 50 sessions (pitches, conference, talks, workshops…) entirely dedicated to documentary creation.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 10:00 - 12:15 and 15:00 - 17:30
Khadidja Benouataf
Coming from a background of journalism, Khadidja is president of IMPACT SOCIAL CLUB, the Think Tank of impact in France, impact strategist at BIM - Best Impact Movies and advisory committee member of the Global Impact Producers Alliance (GIPA). She trains film industry professionals and students internationally (Dixit - Le Film Français, FOCAL, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, École W-Paris-Panthéon-Assas/CFJ), acts as a jury member, panelist and runs impact workshops in international film festivals (BERLINALE, IDFA, FIFDH, DOK LEIPZIG, MOVIES THAT MATTER, SUNNY SIDE OF THE DOC, FIPADOC…). She has designed the impact strategies & impact campaigns of award-winning documentaries: The Zimov Hypothesis by Denis Sneguirev, Le Dernier Refuge - The Last Shelter by Ousmane Samassekou and the French campaign of Shadow Game by Eefje Blankevoort & Els Van Driel, Tax Wars by Hege Dehli and Xavier Harel, she is currently working on Erik Gandini’s After Work project…
Availability: Thursday 13th from 15:00 - 17:30 and Friday 14th from 10:00 - 12:15 and from 12:30 - 14:45
Chiara Messineo
Chiara Messineo is a Bafta-nominated London-based Executive Producer and Director with over twenty years of credits on high-end documentaries on CNN, Netflix, Amazon Prime, BBC, PBS, Discovery and National Geographic.
She is an innovative creative with an extensive track record of developing and delivering award-winning original new series and films. Her groundbreaking projects, which she sees through from conception to delivery, have attracted multi-million-dollar commissions across the television spectrum. Her series for CNN, Searching for Italy with Stanley Tucci, won multiple Emmys, and her Netflix series Vatican Girl was nominated for a BAFTA in the UK and a Nastro d'Argento in Italy.
Availability: Thursday 13th 15:00 - 17:30 and Friday 14th from 10:00 - 14:45
Marion Schimdt
Marion is a consultant, cultural manager and facilitator in the documentary film and NGO sector. She believes in the need for structural change and in her practice strives to create spaces where critical interaction is possible. She is co-founder, board member and senior consultant of the Documentary Association of Europe, advisor to the DW Akademie Film Department and regularly works with transnational organisations and initiatives in different geographies as a consultant and mentor. She is executive board member of NAAS - Network of Arab Alternative Screens e.V., member of the European Film Academy, and a founding member and previous director of ARTEF - Anti Racism Taskforce for European Film. In 2014, Marion also co-founded DOX BOX e.V., held several roles in the organisations, and has in the last 15+ years organised public multidisciplinary arts events and conferences and worked with social enterprises and non-profit organisations in the UK, Egypt and Germany. In 2021/22, Marion (co)-authored a publication for the Institute for Foreign Policy (ifa) on strategies for more equitable support for international relocation in North-South contexts. She holds a Master's degree in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy from the University of London, UK, and a Diploma in Events Management.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 12:30 - 14:45 and Friday 14th from 12:30 - 17:30
Rachel Wexler
Rachel is an Emmy award winning producer, executive producer and consultant specialising in ambitious documentary projects for a worldwide audience. She has worked on 15 films for BBC Storyville to date and has collaborated with many award-winning film-makers. She has been successful in raising a significant amount of finance from broadcasters and platforms
worldwide, along with equity partners, foundations and crowdfunding. As well as producing films, Rachel has devised and delivered two training schemes for emerging producers; Interdoc and Future Producer School which was run with various partners including; Sheffield DocFest, Creative Skillset, Public Media Alliance and the Tribeca Film Institute.
Availability: Thursday 13th 10:00 - 14:45 and Friday 14th from 12:30 - 17:30
Julian Carrington
Julian Carrington is a film programmer, a creative analyst, and a racial equity advocate based in Toronto. He is currently Managing Director of the Racial Equity Media Collective (REMC), a non-profit organisation committed to equity for racialized creators in Canada’s film, television, and digital media industries. He is also lead curator at Planet in Focus, Canada’s largest environmental film festival. In addition, Julian acts as an external project reader for Telefilm Canada, and was a member of the 2024 Editorial Committee for PBS’ POV strand. Previously, he served as Senior Industry Manager at Hot Docs, where he oversaw market programs and film funds. Recent fund grantees include The Mother of All Lies (2023), Against the Tide (2023), Children of the Mist (2021), and Softie (2020). Prior to joining Hot Docs, Julian was an associate programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 10:00 - 12:15 and Friday 14th from 10:00 - 14:45
Dumitrita Pacicovschi
Dumitrita is a markets and documentary film producer, who also occasionally programs or sits on screening committees for film festivals around the world. She started her journey into the documentary field in 2013 working at Thessaloniki Documentary FF and hasn’t looked back since then. Based in Italy, Dumitrita currently splits her time between IDFA Markets, When East Meets West Co-production forum, Focus Asia Market, Moldox Lab, and various documentary projects and consultations.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 10:00 - 14:45 and Friday 14th from 12:30 - 17:30
Robin Smith
Robin Smith is currently the CEO of Blue Ice Docs Inc. – a distribution and equity funding company dedicated to funding, acquiring and distributing the best non-fiction work from around the world. Robin brings a strong background of over 28 years of film, video and arts-related work to the marketplace having worked at a variety of distribution companies including The National Film Board of Canada, Alliance Films, Lions Gate Film Entertainment, Seville Pictures, Capri Releasing and levelFILM. Robin has recently also been brought aboard to advise a variety of companies such as the Vancouver International Film Festival, Vortex Media and Elevation Pictures. Robin also programmed the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema for its first 10 years of operation. Notable releases managed and navigated by Robin include such hits as CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, AWAY FROM HER, CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, BLACKFISH, UP THE YANGTZE and KEDI. Robin has also acted as Executive Producer on a variety of award-winning documentaries including the Oscar-nominated ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL (dir: Steve James), the Emmy- Award winning SOLITARY (dir: Kristi Jacobson), the Emmy-Award winning ADVOCATE (dir: Rachel Leah Jones, Philippe Bellaiche), the commercial hit A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX (dir: Rodney Asher) and the 2023 SXSW documentary THE HOBBY (dir: Simon Ennis).
Availability: Friday 14th from 15:00 - 17:30
Jenny Luukkonen
Jenny Luukkonen has a background as a film and festival producer and is currently based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Since 2019, she is the co-production executive for short format and documentary at Film i Väst, one of Europe's most successful regional film funds. Some of her latest documentary titles are The Gullspång Miracle by Maria Fredriksson, And the king said, what a FANTASTIC MACHINE! by Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck and After Work by Erik Gandini. In addition to co-producing, she runs several talent schemes and programs, aimed at emerging directors, producers and script writers, as part of the fund’s focus on talent development. Jenny can advice you on co-production with the Nordics, distribution and festivals.
Availability: Thursday 13th 10:00 - 14:45 and Friday 14th from 10:00 - 12:15
Lisa Marie Russo
Lisa Marie Russo is an American/British filmmaker and has led three UK Funds. She has produced or executive produced over thirty feature films and TV dramas. Recent executive producer credits include Nothing Compares, Is There Anybody Out There?, Rebellion, A Bunch of Amateurs and the shorts The Nightcrawlers (Emmy) and The Black Cop (Bafta). She is a co-producer for Autofiction Films on the Ukrainian documentary, A Poem for Little People, 2024. Her companies are Fly Film and Autofiction Films, and she is a consultant for the Sheffield DocFest MeetMarket.
Availability: Friday 14th from 10:00 - 12:15 and 15:00 - 17:30
Sarah Mosses
Sarah is the Founder & CEO of Together Films, a marketing and sales company serving the international film community from our offices in London & NYC. She has acted as the Head of Marketing for leading Film Festivals including Sheffield DocFest (Sheffield, UK), DOC NYC (NYC, US), Human Rights Watch Film Festival (London, UK & NYC, US), and the Athena Film Festival (NYC, US). She is passionate about serving filmmakers to increase their social impact, reach, and revenue for multi-award-winning titles like For Sama, Unrest, The Tale & Roll Red Roll. She also helps a variety of industry and brand clients to optimize their business performance through technology and operational support, such as Sony and Patagonia. Sarah recently graduated from the prestigious Inside Pictures film leadership course and was selected for the Mayor of London’s International Growth Programme (including trade visits to NYC & LA).
Availability: Thursday 13th from 15:30 - 17:00 and Friday 14th from 15:00 - 16:30
Lorraine Hess
Lorraine is a seasoned independent producer/consultant specializing in international and domestic film production, program licensing and acquisitions, distribution and curation for broadcast, digital and festivals.
As a co-founder and former V.P of Acquisitions and Programming for independent US network, LinkTV, as well as a programmer and acquisitions consultant for digital platforms and film festivals, Lorraine is passionate about transformative domestic and international programming that sheds light
on issues and stories that give voice to the underdog and inspire us to make the world a better place. As a buyer, Lorraine has acquired literally hundreds of documentaries and high-end foreign dramas
such as Borgen and Arab Labor. Currently a consultant curating PBSSOCAL’s documentary strand,
LinkVoices, Lorraine is also a recent Bertha Foundation Fellow and independent producer. Recently, Lorraine has been selectively helping filmmakers in their fundraising efforts, PBS
sponsorship and underwriting fundraising and distribution of their films as well as producing her own work.
Availability: Friday 14th from 10:00 - 12:15 and 12:30-14:45
Consultancies
Book or walk up to meet with the organizations and consultants in the Reception Room of Cutlers' Hall.
NEST PRODUCTIONS
Nest Productions is the UK's first full production partnerships and services company with a community of over 150 production partners, transforming the UK indie landscape one production at a time.
Born from a growing need for production management support outside the realms of traditional structures and an urgent need for friendly and fair production support. Nest specialises in supporting small and emerging indies and producers with the infrastructure of a big company whilst allowing you to retain full IP and editorial control. The team have been responsible for some of the UK's largest juggernauts including The BAFTA Film Awards, Breakpoint, Rio Ferdinand's Tipping Point and many more.
Whether it's through our partnerships or production services, Nest will support productions from development and budgeting phase through to development – come and chat to us to see how we can help make your production a reality.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 15:00 - 17:30 and Friday 14th from 10:00 - 14:15
Warner Chappell Production Music
Warner Chappell Production Music provides an exceptional soundtrack to every story. Our diverse catalogue of 444,000+ tracks has every imaginable genre and style of music, as well as legacy Archive and Classical recordings labels. Our new label Run4Cover offers new versions of some of Warner Chappell’s most iconic repertoire.
Our in-house experts can support you throughout every step of your production process with personalised licensing advice, music curation, and bespoke composition tailored to your story.
Availability: 12:30 - 17:30 on Thursday 13th and 10:00 - 14:15 on Friday 14th
Lyfta
Lyfta is a subscription-based, immersive learning platform for schools, where children and young people can learn about important global issues through powerful, short documentaries and 360° content produced all around the world.
Lyfta commissions and distributes documentary films and 360° content created by local filmmakers from all corners of the globe. Our films are housed on our platform within an innovation called ‘storyworlds’ - fully spherical 360° environments that learners can see, hear and interact with from all possible views. Each storyworld consists of a variety of 360° scenes that users journey through, engaging with the films and additional visual and written learning content. The storyworlds are linked to the English National Curriculum through lesson and assembly plans, created for teachers by our education experts
Availability: 15:00 - 17:30 on Thursday 13th
The Guardian
Guardian Documentaries are an expression of the Guardian's core editorial purpose and ethos. We curate and commission films from around the world for our global audience and are committed to telling contemporary stories with unique artistic vision that have the power to provoke, surprise and engage audiences with the changing world we live in. Our films provide a window into the lives of the people behind the headlines. Guardian Documentaries have won critical acclaim, including a 2022 BAFTA Film Award for The Black Cop, an Oscar in 2021 for Colette, and an Oscar nomination for Black Sheep in 2019. Additionally, our films play at prestigious film festivals around the world including Cannes, Tribeca, Sundance, Sheffield DocFest and more. We are committed to creating films that spark insightful conversations and lead to meaningful impact and engagement, with examples of films screening at the Houses of Parliament in the UK and Congress in the US.
Guardian Documentaries is part of Guardian News & Media (GNM) which publishes on theguardian.com, one of the world’s leading English-language news websites.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 12:30 - 14:45 and Friday from 12:30 to 14:45
Stitch & Bitch Editors
Stitch N Bitch Editors is a collective of women and gender non-conforming film and tv editors. We exist as a community to support each other, share jobs and for general industry and tech chat as well as jokes and more. We also host epic meet ups in various venues from members clubs to pubs and park picnics. Welcome to Stitch n Bitch.
Zeina Aboul Hosn - for the past ten years, Zeina Aboul Hosn has supported filmmakers to carve their vision out of mountains of material. The films she's cut have screened everywhere from the Berlinale to the BBC to Netflix, winning awards along the way.
http://www.zah.space/
Emily Badescu - Emily is an experienced documentary editor her credits include the multi-award-winning, SXSW premiering indie feature doc 'Alien On Stage', described as 'One of the funniest documentaries in years', as well as documentaries for VICE, Netflix and E4.
https://www.emilybadescu.com/
Yas Almosawi - Yas is an Emmy award winning editor with films that have screened at the UN, The Roundhouse and EuroNews. With TV credits on BBC, Vice, Netflix, and Hulu.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7884317/
Cassandra Roberts - Cassandra has edited and story consulted on feature documentaries that have screened at Hot Docs, DOCNYC and BFI Flare. She also cuts TV with credits on Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, BBC, PBS, Nat Geo, Discovery, Vice and MTV.
www.cassandraroberts.com
Zeb Achonu - Zeb is a BAFTA and RTS award winning editor with credits across mainstream broadcasters and streamers alike. She is an outspoken advocate for diversity in post, wannabe popstar and mum to 3 curious wildlings.
www.zebeditor.com
Zan Barberton - Zan is a filmmaker and editor who has won awards internationally for a range of indy shorts and 3 feature documentaries, one of which was selected at Toronto (TIFF). A bit of a narrative theory geek, she has cut loads of broadcast TV and edited an award-winning
participatory doc on location in Palestine.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 10:00 - 14:45 and Friday 14th 10:00 - 12:15 and 15:00 - 17:30
ShareDoc
Anne Marie Borsboom - www.share-doc.org
We created ShareDoc to empower your audience to become a change-maker and amplify the social impact of documentaries. Following the screening of your documentary, the audience can now donate to a protagonist or a charity or take concrete actions such as signing a petition or organizing a protest to raise awareness of a cause. ShareDoc enables the audience to overcome the post-documentary blues by taking immediate action and supporting the protagonists or a cause. The ShareDoc platform is build with the help of Creative Europe therefore signup and create a page for you film is without cost.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 10:00 - 14:45 and Friday 14th from 12:30 - 17:30
BFI Certification Unit
The BFI Certification Unit is the first point of contact for applicants wanting to qualify their film (including shorts), video games, high-end television programme, animation television programme or children’s television programme as British in order to access the UK’s creative sector tax reliefs and expenditure credits(AVEC, VGEC). BFI Certification Analysts Chantel Burrell and Collette Weston are on hand to talk to you about the process for certifying your project as British and accessing the tax relief to help finance your documentaries or other projects. Further information can be found on the BFI website.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 10:00 - 14:45 and Friday 14th from 12:30 - 17:30
The Documentary Film Council (DFC)
The Documentary Film Council (DFC) is a new sector-wide body for the UK’s independent documentary film industry that will be owned and run by and for its members.
The DFC emerged from consultations with filmmakers and stakeholders across the documentary industry. The findings revealed an urgent need for coordinated action to address the challenges faced by the independent documentary community. Addressing these problems will require long-term, sector-wide coordination by a national body with the remit and resources to do that work. Enter the DFC - a new, democratic organisation designed to represent the interests of the independent documentary community and facilitate effective, coordinated action on the key issues in our industry.
Availability: Thursday 13th 15:00 - 17:30 and Friday 14th from 10:00 - 14:45
Film In Mind/Documentality
Rebecca Day is a qualified psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and freelance documentary producer. She founded Film In Mind, a therapy service for filmmakers, in 2018 to address mental health in the film industry. She combines her therapeutic skills with over a decade of documentary production experience to offer consultancies, workshops and therapeutic support to filmmakers working in difficult situations and with vulnerable people. She is also a co-founder of DocuMentality, an international initiative designed to elevate the conversation around mental health in the documentary community. She has been a guest speaker and mentor on panels and at workshops with organisations such as IDFA, Berlinale, International Documentary Association, Video Consortium, WIFTV and Sheffield DocFest.
Availability: Thursday 13th from 14:00 - 16:30 and Friday 14th from 10:00 - 12:15 and 15:00 - 17:30
