The final ever episode! This week, my first ever guest, Georgia Goggin is back! As a producer, Georgia has been collaborating with writer/director Dionne Edwards for over a decade under their banner Teng Teng Films. Georgia was nominated for the Breakthrough Producer BIFA for her work on their critically acclaimed debut PRETTY RED DRESS. Their previous film, the celebrated 2016 short WE LOVE MOSES won multiple awards, screened at festivals worldwide, has been licensed by Canal+, Netflix, HBO...

This is week my guest is Desiree Akhavan!  Desiree’s first feature film was 2014’s APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR, in which she also starred. It came off the back of a web series she made in 2010 called The Slope, with fellow NYU postgrad film student Ingrid Jungermann. After Appropriate Behaviour, Desiree had a guest spot on the TV show Girls, and also began adapting the book THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST, alongside her co-writer and producer Cecilia Frugiuele. The film, which Desiree also...

This week’s guest is Moss Barclay, an Executive Producer for TV at See-Saw Films, whose shows include SLOW HORSES  and THE ESSEX SERPENT on Apple TV+, HEARTSTOPPER on Netflix and THE NORTH WATER on BBC iPlayer. Moss started her career working for filmmaker Paul Greengrass before co-founding new-writing theatre festival, HighTide. She was also an intern at Working Title and went on to hold positions at Big Talk Pictures and Sixteen Films before spending 10 years at Pulse Films, where she led...

This week’s guest is Leo Anna Thomas, (they/them) who has twenty years’ experience in the Art Department and six as Standby Art Director on projects such as SMALL AXE, TRIGONOMETRY, HIS DARK MATERIALS and BLACK MIRROR.  They are also the first wellbeing facilitator for the Film and TV industry. Having experienced bullying firsthand they stepped away from the industry in 2009 to look after their mental health. They returned in 2013 and as part of that return they began to develop the role of...

This week’s guest is Farhana Bhula, the Head of Creative at Film4, where she  has overseen production on a mix of projects from debut to established filmmakers.  Those projects include How to Have Sex by Molly Manning Walker, Layla by Amrou Al-Kadhi and All Of Us Strangers by Andrew Haigh starring Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott.   She joined Film4 in 2022 from the BFI where she was a Senior Development and Production Executive and worked on Scrapper by Charlotte Regan, Pretty Red Dress by...

This week’s guest is Vicki Brown, the Senior Executive of Sales & Distribution at the BFI.  Before the BFI she was at Together Films where she was Head of Acquisitions, Sales and Distribution, a company that is one of the leaders in social impact entertainment. She was responsible for setting up the international sales department and oversaw the acquisition of In Camera the first feature from director Naqqash Khalid.  Prior to her arrival at Together Films, Vicki was the Director of...

This week’s guest is Tricia Tuttle, the Head of Directing Fiction at NFTS and former Director of BFI Festivals, where she led on both LFF and Flare.  She announced her departure from the role in October 2022, after 10 years at the BFI as Festivals Director and Deputy Head of Festivals. Prior to that, she held the post of film and skills programme manager at BAFTA and events producer at London’s The Script Factory.  We talk about her early and passionate love of cinema, moving to London from...

This week’s guest is Uzma Hasan, a producer known for bringing subversive stories to global audiences.  Her first feature as producer was THE INFIDEL, starring Omid Djalili, David Baddiel and Archie Panjabi.  Her latest feature film CREATURE - directed by Academy-Award winner Asif Kapadia - is a ground-breaking, genre-busting collaboration with Lawrence Olivier Award winning choreographer Akram Khan and sees the English National Ballet perform a story inspired by the play Woyzeck.  Uzma is...

This week’s guest is Laura Zempel, an award-winning editor for film & TV based in Los Angeles.  I invited to Laura to the podcast after binge-watching the series Beef on Netflix earlier this year and being really impressed with everything about that show, but particularly the editing and how it balances the modulating tone and storylines so deftly.  Laura was nominated for an Emmy for her work on that show, and not for the first time, she previously won for Outstanding Single-Camera...

This week’s guest is Clare Baines, the BFI’s first Disability Equality Lead.  Clare is a blind creative. Unable to recognise her own experience reflected in culture, she uses storytelling to create community and belonging for disabled people. Through comedy and joy, she challenges society's perception of disability, queerness, and all the joyful intersections in between.  She is the BFI's first Disability Equality Lead where she leads community-led action to tackle ableism within the...

This week my guest is Cassandra Johnson-Bekoe, a woman who wears many hats - among which are writer, producer, script editor and the current Head of Scripted Development at DARE Pictures.  After working as a bouncer to fund her Screenwriting certificate from the Met Film School, Cassandra's way into the industry was through the Mama Youth Project in 2016.  Cassandra was previously senior development executive at Daniel Kaluuya’s production outfit 59%, overseeing the company’s slate and...

This week I'm pleased to welcome to Best Girl Grip talent agent Emma Obank.  Emma joined Casarotto Ramsay & Associates, an industry-leading literary agency representing many of the world’s best-known creatives, in 2014 as an Agent’s Assistant.  At the age of 26, Emma started building her own list of screenwriters, directors and literary properties; today she represents some of the UK’s most exciting and promising new voices.  Alongside her agenting work, Emma launched Casarotto’s...

This week my guest is award-winning, freelance foley editor and mixer Sophia Hardman.  Sophia studied Sound Technology at The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and started out her career at Twickenham Studios as an intern 9 years ago.  Since then Sophia has worked on a wide range of projects, from high-end TV dramas to Oscar-nominated feature films. Her credits include THE OUTFIT, HOUSE OF GUCCI, THE LAST DUEL, BELFAST, NO TIME TO DIE, ENOLA HOMES, THE TOURIST, STATE OF THE UNION and...

This week's guest is producer Helen Gladders. I became aware of Helen’s work through the 2016 short film RHONNA & DONNA, directed by Daina O. Pusic, and then I kept seeing her name popping up everywhere and knew she was a producer to watch.  More things you might want to know about Helen:   She is a graduate of the National Film and Television School having done their MA in Producing for Film & Television. She set up her own company Gingerbread Pictures in October 2016 and was...

This week my guest is the wonderful Eve Gabereau. Eve is someone whose work and ingenuity I became aware of quite early on in my own career and she is someone I have wanted on the podcast for a good while. Eve is the Founder and Managing Director of Modern Films, a London-based, female-led, social issues-driven production, distribution and event cinema company. It was founded in 2017 and since gone onto to release buzzy titles such as BORDER, MURINA, HAPPY AS LAZZARO, WHITE RIOT, WHEEL OF...

This week my guest is producer Jeanie Igoe.  Jeanie’s big break came when she landed a role at A24, where her credits as a production executive include Barry Jenkins’ MOONLIGHT, Trey Edwards Shults’, IT COMES AT NIGHT, Bo Burnham’s EIGHTH GRADE and Robert Eggers’ THE LIGHTHOUSE. She also served as a producer on their TV series RAMY, and a co-producer on David Lowery’s THE GREEN KNIGHT. She then launched herself as an independent producer, with her first project MISS JUNETEENTH, the...

This week I’m thrilled to be chatting with film critic, broadcaster, podcaster and now author Hanna Flint, about her path into the film and media industry, as well as how her new book STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER was born. Having started out in various journalism and media roles for the likes of MailOnline, Metro and OK! Magazine, Hanna has since become a prolific film critic and features writer, with bylines at a wealth of outlets, including Variety, Empire Magazine, Sight & Sound, Time Out,...

My guest this week is the incredibly talented and prolific sound designer and mixer Ines Adriana. Ines studied for an MA in sound design at NFTS and has been credited on over 40 projects since 2020, including some incredible short films like Ruth Greenberg’s RUN, Molly Manning Walker’s, GOOD THANKS, YOU?, Theo James Krekis’ PRAM SNATCHER, Nia Childs’ HOME, as well as documentaries such as THE CATHEDRAL and SELF-PORTRAIT. Ines’ work has screened at Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, BFI London Film...

This week, my guest is music supervisor Lucy Bright.  Lucy started out at Mute Records working with artists such as Nick Cave and Depeche Mode, before moving to Warner Classics for six years and then leaving to manage composer Michael Nyman. She joined the film and TV department of publisher Music Sales (now Wise Music) in 2008 and worked there for a decade. In 2020 she launched her own music publishing company, Bright Notion Music, signing the composers like Anne Nikitin, Jed Kurzel and...

Olive Nwosu is a Nigerian filmmaker, a BAFTA Pigott 2020 Scholar, an Alex Sichel Fellow at Columbia University School of the Arts, and one of four ‘African Promises’ directors selected by the Institut Français. She has directed two award-winning short films: TROUBLEMAKER and EGÚNGÚN (MASQUERADE), both set in Nigeria and which have screened in numerous film festivals, including Sundance, the BFI London Film Festival, TIFF and the Aspen Shortsfest. The latter was also nominated for Best...

My guest this week is Carmen Thompson a film programmer, curator and creative producer based in Scotland, who predominantly works with Black film and cinema from the African continent and the diaspora, especially at their intersections with non-fiction storytelling.  She currently works as cultural curator and programmer for award-winning exhibitors We Are Parable and as producer for international sales & distribution company Aya Films, where in recent years she has worked on the UK...

I spoke to Adelaide Waldrop a certified Intimacy Director with Intimacy for Stage and Screen (ISS), where she trained with Lizzy Talbot and Yarit Dor (she began training in this work in 2017 with various practitioners in the UK and US). She also serves as the Secretary of the Intimacy Coordinators’s Branch of BECTU and teaches Intimacy for Performance at LAMDA. Speaking of which, Adelaide graduated from LAMDA’s MA in Directing programme in 2017. She has directed productions in the UK and...

My guest this week is Reetu Kabra, a London-based publicist with over 15 years’ experience working in house for renowned media and entertainment companies including the BBC and BBC Studios, UKTV, Discovery Networks and Penguin Random House.  During her time at BBC Worldwide she handled global publicity for the internationally acclaimed Doctor Who and Sherlock as well as other major BBC dramas including War & Peace, Luther and Wolf Hall.  In 2017, she managed the Cannes Film Festival...

My guest this week is Aoife McArdle, a filmmaker from Northern Ireland who you may know from her recent stint as a co-director and producer on Apple TV's Emmy-nominated series Severance.  Severance depicts a world in which people can choose to surgically divide their work and personal lives, so neither selves have any idea who they are outside of those realms. It stars Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro and Christopher Walken and it recently secured 14 Emmy Award nominations,...