I’ve got a Friday treat for you in the form of this bonus minisode with documentary filmmaker and producer Sara Dosa, whose latest project FIRE OF LOVE is in UK cinemas today. Find showtimes near you! This explosive and intimate and eccentric documentary tells the story of Katia and Maurice Krafft, French volcanologists who were also a married couple. For two decades they roamed the planet, chasing eruptions and documenting their discoveries and in doing so, left behind a legacy that...

My guest this week is Make-up and Hair Designer Claire Anne Williams. Claire left a career as a legal secretary to train at the Delamar Academy before being accepted onto a ScreenSkills traineeship where she worked on big-budget productions such as Solo: A Star Wars Story and Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil. After working on shorts, commercials and music promos, Claire received her first head of department credit working on Neil Maskell’s Klokkenluider and recently worked as Make-Up and Hair...

I am thrilled to say that my guest this week is Jessica Kiang.  Jessica is an International Critic for Variety, covering all the major European and Asian festivals. She also writes for Sight & Sound, BBC Culture, The New York Times and The Playlist, where she also spent five years as Features Editor. She also regularly features on the Film Comment podcast, which if you like film and discussion and why would you be here otherwise, I highly recommend. Jessica mentions some of the pieces...

This week my guest is Sheena Patel, an assistant director for Film and TV. Her credits as a 1st AD include Casualty and Dominic Savage’s upcoming series I Am Ruth. She has also 3rd Assistant Directed on feature films such as Boxing Day and Pirates, as well as series like I Hate Suzie and Apple Tree House, and she is represented by Sara Putt Associates. Sheena is also an author and a co-founding member of the poetry collective 4 Brown Girls Who Write and part of the reason I invited her on...

To kick off season six, I’m sharing a live edition that I recorded recently at Sundance London - an offshoot of the Sundance Film Festival that takes place every January in Utah - with the legend that is Tabitha Jackson, the outgoing Director of the Sundance Film Festival. Tabitha was announced as the new Festival Director in January 2020,  meaning that her first two festivals had to deal with the ramifications of Covid-19, as well as a reckoning around racial justice.  Her appointment came...

I lied and said that last week was the last episode for a while and then I got a very exciting email about interviewing this week’s guest and here we are. That is guest is New York based cinematographer Ashley Connor, someone whose work I have been a big fan of for quite some time. She has lensed some of my favourite independent films, including Tramps, First Match and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and is a regular collaborator with Josephine Decker, having shot Butter on the Latch, Thou...

I am very excited to introduce this week’s guest, as she is both a friend of the podcast and a someone I consider to be a friend full stop.  And that person is Katie Sinclair.  Katie is an independent producer and development executive, currently working at Blueprint Pictures, whose credits include Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, In Bruges, The Last Letter From Your Lover, The Riot Club and Emma, where she sources and develops projects for the production company’s slate. She has...

My guest this week is Renee Zhan, a Chinese-American director and animator from Houston, Texas now based in London. She graduated from Harvard University in 2016 with a BA in visual and environmental studies and the National Film and Television School in 2020 with a degree in Directing Animation. Her short films, which include 2016’s Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw), 2018’s Reneepotosis, 2020’s O Black Hole and 2021’s Soft Animals have screened and won awards internationally including Locarno TIFF,...

This week my guest is Chi Thai, an independent filmmaker & producer who works across features, documentary, animation & immersive. She has produced over 13 short films, been a Cannes Lion finalist three times, had her work screened at BAFTA & Academy accredited festivals, and exec produced the documentary short Little Miss Sumo, written & directed by Matt Kay, which you can currently watch on Netflix. Chi is also an alumnus of the Guiding Lights scheme and NETWORK@LFF and a...

This week’s interview is with Lizzie Gillet, the Director of the Feature Documentary Department at Passion Pictures, whose credits include the Oscar-winning SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN, Bart Layton’s THE IMPOSTER, James Marsh’ PROJECT NIM and more recently THE RESCUE.  Lizzie recently produced THE TERRITORY, a feature documentary co-produced with an Indigenous community in Brazil about their fight to protect their ancestral land in the Amazon rainforest, which the World Cinema Documentary Award...

My guest is Aisha Bywaters, a BIFA-nominated casting director whose credits include independent films such as Body of Water, County Lines, The Last Tree, Dirty God and Mari, as well as the TV series Enterprice and We Are Lady Parts. Most recently, Aisha cast the upcoming TV series adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s memoir Everything I Know About Love, the process for which we talked about a little bit.  We also discussed Aisha background in theatre, learning the film industry ropes at Shaheen...

My guest this week is Ruth Greenberg, an award-winning screenwriter and director whose directorial debut RUN, a short film starring Niamh Algar from CENSOR, is currently showing on Short of the Week. The film was backed by Film4 and BFI NETWORK and was long listed for a BIFA in 2021.  As a screenwriter, Ruth’s prehistoric horror, THE ORIGIN, is in post-production with Escape Plan Productions - the company who made SAINT MAUD and she’s also working on a medieval horror with director Nora...

My guest this week is Elhum Shakerifar, a BAFTA nominated producer and winner of the 2017 Women in Film & TV's BBC Factual Award and one of Screen International’s 2018 #Brit50 Producers on the Rise. Elhum’s multi-award-winning credits include The Reluctant Revolutionary (Sean McAllister, 2012), The Runner (Saeed Farouky, 2013), multi-award-winning A Syrian Love Story (Sean McAllister, 2015), Even When I Fall (Sky Neal and Kate McLarnon, 2017), BIFA winner for Best Documentary, Almost...

This week's guests are Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth!  Hen and Jess are screenwriters, directors and twin sisters. Having penned their first script at 15, they went onto write OLIVIA AND JIM which came third on the Brit List in 2011. In 2012, at the age of 24 they were featured on ScreenDaily’s prestigious Stars of Tomorrow list and began writing on TV shows such as FRESH MEAT, DIXI and KILLING EVE.. In 2018 their BFI-backed debut feature as screenwriters - TELL IT TO THE BEES, starring...

My guest this week is Sandra Hebron, the Head of Screen Arts at the National Film and Television School where she leads the course for the MA in Film Studies, Programming and Curation. Previously Sandra was Head of Festivals and the Artistic Director of the BFI London Film Festival and Director of Cinemas at Manchester’s Cornerhouse. She is also a qualified Psychotherapist with a counselling business.  We spoke about how she got her start in film exhibition, her time as artistic director of...

My guest this week is Rose Garnett, the Director of BBC Film. Since joining the BBC in 2017, Rose has commissioned and Executive Produced a wide range of titles including… Joanna Hogg’s THE SOUVENIR and THE SOUVENIR: PART II Eliza Hittman’s NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS Sean Durkin’s THE NEST Steve McQueen’s SMALL AXE Jane Campion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG Debbie Tucker Green’s EAR FOR EYE ...among many others and is passionate about backing new and emerging filmmakers. Rose was also an...

It’s been a weird week, with Omicron taking hold and trying to feel festive but also feeling quite apprehensive. So I hope you’re surviving, which has definitely been the overarching theme for 2021. And as always I hope this podcast brings a little bit of light into your week. It’s an appropriate segue to introduce my guest - filmmaker Sophie Littman - whose short film Sudden Light was selected for competition at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival 2020 and was nominated for a BIFA that same...

My guest this week is Akua Gyamfi who has over 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry, with a career spanning fashion, film, television, theatre, print and online media. Starting out behind the scenes, Akua carved out a reputable career as a hair stylist on London’s Portobello Road. Her hairdressing reputation lead to her first foray into the entertainment world with a hair CV which includes work for magazines Vogue, Disorder, BOLZ, and i-D. Since 2010 she has been a part of...

My guest this week is a wonderful woman and friend: Nia Childs.  Nia is a freelance creative producer and curator working in both the fiction and documentary space. She’s produced, curated and programmed projects for Doc Society, BAFTA, Sheffield Doc/Fest, the London Short Film Festival and The Roundhouse. More recently, she has begun to write and direct her own films, with her debut short The Other End premiering at the BFI London Film Festival earlier this year. We spoke about a myriad...

Siobhán Harper-Ryan is a Hair & Make-Up Designer who started out as an apprentice in fashion design & millinery in London’s Camden Lock, before exploring the world of theatre in the 90s where she found a place within London’s Off West-End and the Fringe. In 1999 Siobhán changed course and trained in make-up artistry and has since enjoyed a varied & colourful career, working on a range of TV and film projects. Recently she worked on Sky Atlantic’s series I Hate Suzie, as well as...

This week’s interview was a real treat to record. Sam Joly, my guest, radiates joy and positivity, but what I got from this chat is the sense that that’s a choice and one that sometimes takes work and so I hope you come away from it with a smile, but also a sense of how you can celebrate your personal achievements and maybe make that choice too. Sam is Head of Marketing and Publicity at the film and television production house See-Saw Films. These are the folks that made The King’s Speech,...

I’m here today with a bonus minisode with two-time Academy-Award nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus to celebrate the release of her latest documentary Becoming Cousteau. If you listened to last Tuesday’s interview with Anna Godas, CEO of Dogwoof, you’ll have heard me mention the film. Well it’s out in UK cinemas today and all puns intended, I think you’ll have a whale of a time.  For over four decades, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his explorations under the ocean became synonymous with a love of...

My guest this week is Anna Godas, the CEO of documentary distribution company Dogwoof, who have released films such as The Alpinist, The Act of Killing, Blackfish, Cameraperson, Citizenfour, Free Solo, Honeyland, Minding the Gap, OJ:Made in America, RBG and many many more. Quite simply, if Dogwoof are putting a doc into cinemas, you’re probably in for a treat. Their latest film is Becoming Cousteau, directed by Liz Garbus which is released this Friday and provides an inside look at the life...

Hello! Welcome to Season Five of Best Girl Grip.    This week my guest is Jemma Desai. I first encountered Jemma at an event hosted by The Quarter Club, which was co-founded by former podcast guest Jo Duncombe, where Jemma was reading a letter she had written to her daughter Leena which evolved into a TinyLetter for a while. And then I kept encountering Jemma’s name and work in various iterations and I was always struck by how thoughtful and rigorous and I guess, unconventional it was....

This week I am back with the third instalment of my bonus trilogy and my guest is the incredibly talented, incredibly charming Cathy Brady! Cathy is a two-time IFTA-winning director, having won Best Short in 2011 for her first film Small Change and again in 2013 for Morning. In 2011, Cathy directed the BIFA nominated short Rough Skin, starring Vicky McClure, and in 2013, Cathy was named one of Screen Daily’s ‘Stars of Tomorrow’. In 2014, Cathy directed on the BAFTA-nominated...