Director/ Producer

Subina Shrestha is a filmmaker and a journalist who likes to push boundaries in storytelling. Her work ranges from print stories on the New York Times, to short fiction in virtual reality. Her documentaries on Al Jazeera have been used by various educational institutions including Columbia Journalism School, SOAS, and by human rights organizations in the Hague to discuss modern day slavery and the Maoist conflict. Her news coverage on Nepal’s earthquake and its aftermath earned her multiple awards including an Emmy nomination. She was nominated for the Rory Peck Award for her camerawork while undercover reporting in Myanmar during cyclone Nargis. She was a 2017 Nieman fellow at Harvard, a 2019 Global Media Maker fellow at Film Independent, and a 2022 Ochberg fellow at the Dart Centre, Columbia University.

Researcher/Producer

Asmita Khadka is an independent journalist and a researcher who’s known for her fighting spirit. As a child, she joined the ‘revolution’ to change the status quo, and as a woman, she became a journalist who challenged the status quo within the Maoist party. She consistently wrote about inclusion, discrimination, and sexual abuse in the party, and became persona non grata. She was the acting editor for the Maoist-run weekly paper, Janadesh.

Asmita is a natural organiser. Even though this is her first documentary project, besides producing the film, she’s been instrumental in the creation of Aparajit, the first the only organisation led and run by conflict related sexual violence survivors.

Producer

As an Exec Producer at BBC World Service’s Investigations Unit. Rosie is currently based in London making docs and interactives, mainly about the Middle East and North Africa. She founded Mediadante, producing the Emmy-nominated, The Workers Cup, that premiered on the opening night of Sundance 2017. In 2023 she exec produced Under Poisoned Skies that helped secure a pledge to reduce gas flaring emissions from the Iraqi government and won the RTS for best international documentary of the year. The International Emmy-award winning film Escape from Isis / Escaping ISIS she developed was referenced by the UK Prime Minister in a key speech and shown to the U.S. Congress. In 2014 she Exec produced a CINE Golden Eagle award-winning series following the first Saudi woman up Everest. She is a former British army officer and author of the award-winning book How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone published by Bloomsbury in 2011.

Cinematographer

Bishnu Kalpit is an award winning independent cinematographer and a filmmaker. His short films have won multiple awards in film festivals across the world including a special mention at Banff film festival and best short film at Tasveer film festival. He’s worked for platforms like Netflix to channels like BBC and Al Jazeera. Bishnu has worked with Subina for fifteen years. His films with Subina include Birth In Nepal, an intimate story on the perils of motherhood, and The Disillusioned Soldier, a story of a child soldier in the Maoist conflict, among many others. Bishnu's work with the Maoists has given him an open access to former members of the party.

Editor

Phil has been editing documentary films for the last 20 years. Working on award winning international productions like ‘Nelly & Nadine,’ ‘People We Come Across,’ and ‘Prison Sisters’, he’s also been a rough cut consultant and has been part of films like ‘Liberation Day’, ‘Home Games’, ‘How Big is the Galaxy’, and more. He also enjoys tutoring at international development workshops with B2B Doc, DMZ, and many more. He’s currently based in southern Sweden.

Co-Producer

Heejung Oh grew up in South Korea, and her life is divided between Seoul and Amsterdam. She founded Seesaw Pictures in 2017, a boutique production company with a slate of award-winning films. She has (co-)produced films selected for prestigious festivals such as Sundance, Berlinale, IDFA, CPH:DOX, IFFR, Hotdocs. She loves working with young and established filmmakers with strong artistic visions and sensitivity. She is an alumna of EAVE, Eurodoc, Rotterdam Lab, and Berlinale Talents, and has been invited to the selection committee of IDFA Bertha Fund, Sheffield Doc/Fest, DOK Leipzig and AIDC.

Editor

Nicole Hálová is a freelance documentary editor based in London. Whilst studying for her master’s in Prague, she co-edited The Islands and the Whales with editor Mary Lampson (2016) (Dir: Mike Day) which was nominated for Emmy and BAFTA awards, and won a Peabody Award and the Grand Jury prize at DOCNYC. Nicole lived in the Netherlands where she edited Good Neighbours (2018) (Dir: Stella Van Voorst) premiering at IDFA, and Carrousel (2019) (Dir: Marina Meijer), winning the Golden Calf award at the Netherlands FF.

After relocating to London, her work includes The Elvermen (2021) (dir. Isla Badenoch) and Cowboy Poets (2022), both screened at the Camden International Film Festival. She was an additional editor on All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) (Dir:Laura Poitras) which received acclaim from critics and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards. Nicole also worked installation pieces, such as TiChan by Philipp Ebeling and Olivia Arthur, MAGNUM PHOTOS, and currently works for Forensic Architecture.

Executive Producer

Producer Sigrid Dyekjær has produced more than 30 documentary films during the last 22 years. She is the producer of the Oscar nominated film 2020 The Cave by Feras Fayyad where she won an Emmy for best producer and was nominated for a Peabody Award. She won Best Producer at Cinema Eye 2020 for The Cave, and was nominated for Producers Guild of America also in 2020. The Territory by Alex Pritz, won two awards at Sundance: Audience Award and Jury's Special Award for Best Craft. Sigrid teaches at the National Film School of Denmark and at DOK Incubator, an initiative supported by Media. She also holds master class lectures at film schools around the world and courses in documentary filmmaking. In 2018 Sigrid had the honour of being accepted as a member of The Academy. In spring 2021 Dyekjaer left her company Danish Documentary, to form a her new company Real Lava producing, co-producing and investing in International Documentary Films out of Denmark, backed by French company Newen Studios.

Executive Producer

Dennis is the Co-Founder and Chairman of REACT FILMS (www.reactfilm.com) which produces award-winning film and TV content such as 100 Foot Wave (HBO), The Story of Plastic (Discovery), SLay the Dragon (Participant), and The Workers Cup. He was also the co-founder of the educational nonprofit, REACT to FILM, which created a civic education curriculum taught in for middle and high schools across the USA. For more than a decade, Dennis has served as a Trustee of the Museum of the Moving Image, where he serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors. He has been engaged with numerous nonprofit organizations focused on the digital divide, educational opportunities for underserved youth, and using the power of social issue films to help youth find their voice on critical issues and take action to effect change in their communities.

Composer/Sound designer

Craig Sutherland was born in Scotland and raised in the small village of Kincardine in the 1980s. His mother presented him with his first cassette tape and walkman when he was just two years old. Sutherland believes this was the spark that set his love for sound ablaze. This love of sound, coupled with his fascination of the moving image has led him to become a film composer and sound designer; and one with a unique sonic sensibility. 2015 saw Craig relocating from Scotland to New York City to design sound for The Light Between Oceans (DreamWorks) directed by Derek Cianfrance. Craig, now living in Scotland, continues to work with filmmakers all over, and is a regular theme tune composer for BBC Scotland.

Consulting Producer

Kirstine Barfod received an Emmy, a Cinema Eye award for Outstanding Achievement in Production, and a 2020 Academy Award nomination for producing “The Cave”, directed by Oscar-nominated director Feras Fayyad (Last Men in Aleppo). She has produced and co-produced a dozen feature documentaries, documentary series, including Ibrahim, selected for Sundance in 2019 “The Magic Life of V”, and “Reunited”. She has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2019.

Consulting Producer

Jane Mote is an experienced producer and director who runs her own production company beechtobeach based in West Sussex, England. She supports and trains documentary makers across the world to develop their stories and is Editorial Consultant for The Whickers which funds first time Directors with production grants. She has commissioned and executive produced 100s of hours of TV and feature-length documentaries whilst heading up BBC London and then at Discovery, Turner Broadcasting and Al Gore’s documentary channel Current. She recently co-Directed and produced the feature documentary My Bones Are Woven which premiered at festivals in 2022.

Think-Film Impact Production

Think-Film is a market-leading impact media company that harnesses the power of visual storytelling to drive forward political and social change. The team, led by Founder and Executive Director Danielle Turkov and Global Impact Director Amy Shepherd, work at the cutting-edge intersection of art and policy, partnering with world-leading film, television, AR, VR and music artists to drive forward decisions, commitments and outcomes that bring measurable, lasting change to global situations.

Danielle and Amy’s film credits include Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning feature “The Cave” (Feras Fayyad, “Last Man in Aleppo”), “Dark Waters” (Todd Haynes, starring Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins), Oscar-shortlisted and Emmy-nominated “My Enemy, My Brother” (Ann Shin), Award-winning documentary “iHuman” (Tonje Hessen Schei), multiple award-winning docu-fiction “La Soledad” (Jorge Armaud Thielan) and recently released documentary “The Scars of Ali Boulala” (Max Eriksson).

Impact Producer

Ramzy is a documentary producer and director. In his role as Creative Producer on ‘The Workers Cup’, which premiered on the opening night of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Ramzy successfully negotiated access to the labour camps of Qatar and helped tell a nuanced story from the perspective of the migrant workers building the country. Ramzy has directed short TV documentaries for Al Jazeera English, BBC, CGTN and Discovery.