2020 John Brabourne Awardees
John Brabourne Awards awardees from 2020
Awardees from the 2020 round
Fateme Ahmadi Writer/Director
Bim Ajadi Director
Heather Basten Casting Director
Jay Bedwani Filmmaker
Zillah Bowes Writer/Director
Jen Corcoran Producer
Francesca Fowler Writer
Eloise King Filmmaker
Sky Neal Director/Producer
Libby Penman Filmmaker
David Proud Writer/Director
Eloise Singer Producer
Fateme Ahmadi
CloseWriter/Director
Fateme is a writer-director and graduate of London Film School. She is an alumna of Berlinale Talents 2017 and EIFF Talent Lab 2019. Her short Bitter Sea was nominated for a BIFA for Best British Short in 2018. Fateme’s latest short Leila’s Blues premiered at Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival as a part of Tunisia Factory. She was one of Film London’s Lodestars in 2019. Fateme is currently developing her first feature film with producers BAFTA-nominated Jack Tarling and BFI Vision Awardee Pietro Greppi.
Bim Ajadi
CloseDirector
Bim is a director from London whose short films have been shown at festivals around the world, most recently Aesthetica Short Film Festival. Bim co-directed Look Up for the opening of the 2012 London Paralympics Ceremony (Channel 4). 2020 saw the release of his Deaf Hip Hop drama Here/Not Here. Bim studied at NFTS and was named a BAFTA Breakthrough in 2020.
@twitterHeather Basten
CloseCasting Director
Heather is a casting director based in London. She got her break into the industry at the BFI before moving into casting. She’s since cast for directors including Rob Savage, Ana Rocha De Sousa, Charlotte Regan and Adeyemi Michael. She is a member of the Casting Directors Guild and the Casting Society of America. She was selected a Film London Lodestar in 2020. Past production companies and networks casted for include Pulse Films, Film London, BFI, BBC, Sky Arts and DMC Films. Her most recent work was on No More Wings, which won Best Narrative Short at Tribeca 2020. She is known for streetcasting and for her work on feature film Listen, which won awards at Venice Film Festival 2020. Casting associate level credits include Netflix’s The End of the F**king World and Robert Egger’s The Lighthouse starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson.
@twitterJay Bedwani
CloseFilmmaker
Jay is a Cardiff-based filmmaker specialising in character-led documentary. Jay’s short films have played at over 40 international film festivals. His film My Mother won Best UK Short at the Iris Prize Festival (Europe's largest LGBT festival) and was chosen as BFI Network’s Postroom Pick. His 2018 film Overshare, focusing on issues related to intersectionality in the LGBTQ community, premiered at the O2 Arena in London before completing a sold-out theatre run in the UK. His last short Stretch premiered at EIFF and was awarded Best Short at Wales International Documentary Festival in 2019. Jay has trained on schemes including Bridging the Gap (Ffilm Cymru and Scottish Documentary Institute), FAMLAB (British Council and BFI) and BAFTA Crew 2018-2020. His first feature documentary Donna follows the story of a well-known transgender elder in San Francisco and is slated for release in early 2021. Jay's award from the Film and TV Charity will fund a cinematography course in London and provide development support for his second feature film, which will begin shooting in Berkeley and New York in 2021.
@twitterZillah Bowes
CloseWriter/Director
Zillah is a writer, director and photographer. She studied at the NFTS before working as a cinematographer, then as a director. Her directorial debut Small Protests was nominated for a Grierson Award and won the Current Short Cuts Vimeo Award and Best Short Documentary at the London Independent Film Festival, amongst others. She has directed documentaries for BBC, Channel 4 and online, and collaborated with Turner Prize-winning artist Martin Creed. Zillah recently completed her fiction short Staying (Aros Mae) with Sixteen Films, funded by the BFI/Ffilm Cymru Wales and BBC, and is developing her first fiction feature as a writer/director with the same company. As a cinematographer her feature films include Enemies of Happiness, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival.
Jen Corcoran
CloseProducer
Jen is a producer based in Teesside and Newcastle. She’s currently in production on Hide and Seek [Nascondino], a documentary portrait of a family in Naples’ fabled Spanish Quarters with BFI/Doc Society. Formerly Head of Film at My Accomplice (The Great Hack, The Quiet One) Jen’s work has screened at Tribeca Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest and BFI Flare amongst others. Jen established Freya Films in 2019 with the ambition of building a dynamic, international-facing production company with a regional base. She’s developing a slate of projects focused on progressive, contemporary storytelling and new narratives from the northeast including projects with Victoria Fiore, Paul Sng and Jenna Jovi. Jen has a professional background in international sales and film finance and from 2019 – 2020 managed award-winning regional development programme Tees Valley Screen with Northern Film + Media.
@twitterFrancesca Fowler
CloseWriter
Francesca started her career as an actress in 2004 and has been working in film and television for more than fifteen years, turning to screenwriting in 2010. Represented in both the UK and the US, she has built her portfolio with spec scripts and independent commissions. Her accolades include Comedy-Drama Pick Up, optioned by Blue Ink Films 2020. She won the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Competition for TV Comedy with sitcom Daisy & Robbie Struggle to Survive, now being developed with Objective Fiction. In 2018 her sitcom Party Princesses was optioned, as well as her gothic psychological thriller Lovers Lost being placed on BBC’s in-house one to watch list. In 2017 her genre bending sci-fi-anti-rom-com LOVE. HATE. REPEAT was shortlisted for the Creative England Emerging Talent Fund, and her short film Away From Me premiered at BFI FLARE.
@twitterEloise King
CloseFilmmaker
Eloise is a multi-award winning producer.
She recently executive produced Billie Piper’s ‘Rare Beasts’. The film was premiered in competition at Venice Film Festival and has been longlisted for BAFTA Outstanding Debut Film 2021.
Eloise was awarded a scholarship onto Sundance’s Producer’s Co-Lab and her latest documentary concept showcased at the Sundance Film Festival: London.
Her JBA will go towards developing her slate. This includes a true crime documentary with XYZ Films; and a foreign language film with BAFTA & Golden Globe nominated SeeSaw Films (‘The Farewell’).
Sky Neal
CloseDirector/Producer
Sky is a director producer and founder of Satya Films. Her BFI and Sundance backed, co-directed feature documentary Even When I Fall (2018) received numerous awards, nominations and official selections including a BIFA nomination, and screened in 45 cities nationwide. Director broadcast credits include Children at Work for BBC, Nepal’s Lost Circus Children for Al Jazeera English, and she has exhibited work at the V&A and the Science Museum. Sky grew up in Cornwall and has just released a documentary for The Guardian, The Daisy Chain, which follows a Cornish community though lockdown. Her award will help her to research and develop a documentary and dance film about a mother and son, and the power of creativity to help navigate the shifting sands of identify, gender and relationships as the son makes life changing decisions.
Libby Penman
CloseFilmmaker
Libby is a multi-award-winning filmmaker from Kirkcaldy, Scotland. In the drama industry, she has worked on productions for Netflix, Warner Bros, Sky Atlantic and BBC One. In recent years she has turned her attention to documentary. During her time at BBC Scotland, Libby shot and edited several pieces for broadcast TV and online. On social media alone she accumulated 6 million views for short films she shot and edited. Libby is passionate about the environment and is an ambassador for BAFTA’s carbon-calculator scheme Albert, in recognition of her work on promoting sustainability in the TV sector. She created the film Going Green Behind the Scenes for BBC One’s award-winning hit drama The Victim. In 2020 Libby is directing/presenting her own film, a documentary examining the impact the climate emergency is having on wildlife in Scotland. Notable contributors include climate activist Holly Gillibrand, WWF Scotland and wildlife presenter/filmmaker legend Gordon Buchanan. The film is currently in post-production. Libby recently commenced a Master’s in Wildlife Documentary Production at Salford Manchester. Her place on the course was funded by the prestigious Dewar’s Arts Award. Libby will be using her award from the charity to purchase specialist wildlife filmmaking equipment.
David Proud
CloseWriter/Director
David is an English actor/writer/director. He was born with Spina Bifida and uses a wheelchair. His first professional acting role was as a wheelchair basketball player in the children's TV series Desperados and is most well-known on-screen for playing Adam Best in BBC’s EastEnders. In 2011, with funding from Screen South SEEDA and the National Lottery, David filmed his writing debut Wheels of Fortune and continued to create behind the screen with short films, including two premieres at Edinburgh International Film Festival. In 2018 David became a member of the BBC Writers Room and began a development deal with BBC Films for new feature film Mavericks, co-developed with writer Paul Viragh. In late 2019 David directed a BFI/Uncertain Kingdom funded film written by Justin Edgar starring Ruth Madeley and Alice Lowe, which Premiered at Palm Springs Film Festival 2020. In 2020 David finished an ITV Original Voices secondment to the Coronation Street story team and began to write for BBC’s Doctors. In 2018 David began a two-year Engagement Fellowship with the Wellcome Trust during which he will be writing a book and directing a documentary looking at the inclusion of disabled people in society and scientific medical advances. The documentary My Extinction co-directed with Paul Viragh, is a filmmaker’s journey into the future of disability and scientific advances produced by Lindsey Dryden
@twitterEloise Singer
CloseProducer
Eloise is an award-winning producer who has previously worked at Pinewood Studios. She recently executive produced Billie Piper’s high-profile directing debut Rare Beasts, selected for Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, BFI London Film Festival, and SXSW. Eloise set up her company Singer Films in 2017. After producing short films, she was selected for Raindance Raw Talent. Her first feature film premiered at Raindance Film Festival (2017). Eloise is one of ten emerging female filmmakers selected for Creative England’s inaugural Industry Equals: Women in Screen in 2019. She was recently awarded a scholarship onto Sundance’s Producer’s Co-lab Programme and her latest documentary concept showcased at Sundance Film Festival: London 2020. Eloise’s award from the Film and TV Charity will go towards developing her slate which includes: a true crime documentary with XYZ Films; a BFI-supported documentary executive produced by BAFTA nominated Mike Knowles; and a foreign language film with producers Tommie Curran (former Director of Production at Wanda Studios) and BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated Jane Zheng (The Farewell). She is expanding into VR, developing an educational VR game in partnership with Goldsmiths University and Escape Studios. The project is written by BEATS fellowship awardee Maja Bodenstein and executive produced by former Head of Sony London, Dr Dave Raynard.
Awardees from the first round
Chloe Abrahams Filmmaker
Abraham Adeyemi Writer/Director
Kyla Simone Bruce Writer/Director
Dhivya Kate Chetty Director
Dominic Davey Filmmaker
Emily Everdee Producer
Jack Benjamin Gill Writer/Director
Moin Hussain Writer/Director
Elettra Pizzi Producer
Kate Phibbs Producer
Taratoa Stappard Writer / Director
Jonny Tull Distribution and Exhibition
Chloe Abrahams
CloseFilmmaker
Chloe is a British Sri Lankan filmmaker and artist based in London. She has twice been shortlisted for New Contemporaries (2018, 2019) and is a graduating student of the BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. Chloe is the Marketing Coordinator for documentary distributor Dogwoof in London, responsible for the execution of all UK Theatrical campaigns. Notable campaigns include Apollo 11, Oscar®-winning and BAFTA-winning Free Solo, and BAFTA-nominated Three Identical Strangers. Chloe also programs for the UK’s only short doc festival, Cheap Cuts. Chloe’s award will enable her to develop her first feature documentary It Didn’t Start With You.
Abraham Adeyemi
CloseWriter/Director
Abraham is an award-winning writer/director and playwright from London. In 2020 his directorial debut No More Wings was named Best Narrative Short at Tribeca. Abraham participated in the prestigious Royal Court Writers’ Group and his works for stage have played at theatres including the Hammersmith Lyric and Theatre Royal Stratford East. His play These Minging Streets was long listed for the Alfred Fagon Award in 2018. His debut full-length play All the Shit I Can’t Say to my Dad was staged at London theatre The Bunker. In 2019 he won the Soho House screenwriting competition Script House. He’s currently on commission with Channel 4, developing an original pilot as part of their 4Screenwriting programme.
Kyla Simone Bruce
CloseWriter/Director
Kyla is a writer/director based in London. Her critically acclaimed drama Undocument, nominated for two BIFAs, is currently in UK cinemas. Her short Mercury has won awards at festivals around the world and is now being developed into her next feature The Cockatoo Inn.
Kyla has a background in video art and has directed promos for clients including Armani, DKNY and Atlantic Records. She is currently creating content for artists with First Access Entertainment and also works as a script supervisor on TV shows for companies including HBO, BBC and Sky. Kyla received an MA from London Film School for her short The Interpreter, which was long listed for a BAFTA and awarded Best Student Short and Special Mention for Best Woman Director at London Short Film Festival.
Dhivya Kate Chetty
CloseDirector
Dhivya is a documentary director based in Liverpool who has worked for BBC, ITV and More 4. Her last project, the moving feature-documentary Glasgow, Love and Apartheid (Hopscotch Films, 2018), used her grandfather’s 8mm archive to explore the family’s anti-apartheid activism in South Africa and Scotland and unearthed a hitherto unknown story about Mandela hiding at the family home in Pietermaritzburg in the early 1960s. The film was nominated for RTS and Celtic Media Festival awards. It screened at the Glasgow Film Theatre as part of Black History Month before being broadcast on BBC Scotland. Dhivya has worked in doc development and production for the last ten years, primarily in Scotland. Prior to that, she worked in international film sales in London. In 2019 Dhivya was selected for the BFI/Film Hub North Script Lab and is currently in development with them on a short film script, The Barber. She is also developing a slate of doc projects using found footage exploring diversity and migration.
Dominic Davey
CloseFilmmaker
Dominic is a filmmaker based in London. He produced the BIFA long-listed short Ashmina, which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in 2018 and went on to screen at over 130 festivals around the world. He co-produced feature The Martini Shot, starring Matthew Modine, John Cleese, and Sir Derek Jacobi. His directorial debut Eshet Chayil, filming this summer, was awarded a grant by The Pears Short Film Fund at UK Jewish Film. He has several short and feature length scripts in development.
Emily Everdee
CloseProducer
Emily is an independent film producer and founder of production label Everdee Media. She graduated in 2019 with an MA in Producing from NFTS with scholarships from BAFTA and Warner Bros. Creative Talent, and was mentored by Tim Bevan. Since graduation, Emily has produced five shorts including Mandem (Dir. John Ogunmuyiwa), which screened at BFI Flare, and The Call Centre (Dir. Louisa Connolly-Burnham), which has now garnered 500,000 views on Omeleto.
Emily was nominated for Best Producer at Underwire for her work on The Call Centre and Strange Days (Dir. Alice Seabright). Emily’s award will support the development of her production slate, which includes an absurdist-horror adaptation of a literary classic, a father-daughter drama set in the world of sport, and a Scottish love story.
Jack Benjamin Gill
CloseWriter/Director
Jack is a writer/director currently developing his first feature Lambing Season with Delaval Film and the BFI. The project was selected for Edinburgh’s Talent Lab Connects and has development support from Hurricane Films. In 2020 Jack was selected for BFI Network x BAFTA Crew Mentorship and was paired with BAFTA award-winning Michael Pearce (Beast, Keeping Up with the Joneses). Jack’s short films have screened at numerous BAFTA and Oscar qualifying film festivals, screened on Short of the Week, and he previously won the Audience Award at Leeds. His second short, A Life Hereafter, funded by Arts Council England, was acquired by Channel 4’s Random Acts.
Jack has just completed his latest short Doggerland, funded by BFI Network, Intermission, and Genera Films, and is continuing to expand his feature slate.
Moin Hussain
CloseWriter/Director
Moin is a Writer/Director based in London. His short films have screened in competition at festivals around the world, including Cannes’ La Semaine De La Critique, Sitges, BFI London Film Festival and Edinburgh. He is currently developing his first feature Birchanger Green with Film4 and the project has been selected to take part in both the Torino ScriptLab and Cinéfondation’s Atelier at Cannes. A Screen International Star of Tomorrow, Moin is represented by Casarotto Ramsay & Associates in the UK and UTA in the US.
Elettra Pizzi
CloseProducer
Elettra is a Producer based in London who has produced several shorts including award-winning The Dead Ones which was selected by BAFTA, Oscar and European Film Academy qualifying festivals. Her latest film The Act, by Thomas Hescott, is an LGBT love story set in 1965 London starring Samuel Barnett and Simon Lennon. Elettra’s first feature documentary, Gualtiero Marchesi: The Great Italian, was about the culture-shifting chef who rejected Michelin Stars. The film opened in 2018 in over 70 screens in Italy and sold internationally. She produced Coming Down The Mountain, a documentary on mental health after injury featuring international athletes, and produced for ITV’s mental health series Harry’s Heroes. Her films have been funded by Arts Council England, the Stefan Allesch-Taylor Fund and Genera Films and she has participated in the BFI Producers Lab. In 2019 Elettra founded PEACH Producers’ Collective to unite UK-based producers and create a platform for writers and directors to find the right producer.
Kate Phibbs
CloseProducer
With a background in journalism and broadcast, Kate moved into producing in 2016. She has since graduated from the NFTS with an MA and founded London-based La Pêche Productions, which is currently developing a slate of film and TV projects.
Kate produced the 2018 experimental short, The Girl With Two Heads, directed by Betzabé García, won Best Short at Les Arcs and Morelia, and won the Orona Award for Most Innovative Short at San Sebastian in 2018. It also screened within the Official Selection during Semaine de la Critique at Cannes and at Rotterdam in 2019.
The 2019 animation Almost There, directed by Nelly Michenaud, saw official competition at Edinburgh and Animafest Zagreb and won Best Animation at the Prague Film Awards and the Young Talent award at Animateka.
Under the banner of La Pêche, Kate produced, alongside Alex Blue, Alex Seabright’s End-O starring Sophia Di Martino, which premiered at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival. Kate is currently developing work with Olivia Hetreed and Trim Lamba and is in pre-production on short Lilias Adie, written and directed by Elize du Toit.
Taratoa Stappard
CloseWriter / Director
Taratoa is a Writer/Director born in Aotearoa (New Zealand), based in London. His father was English and his mother is Māori (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa). Taratoa’s feature project, Mārama, a Māori revenge horror set in Victorian England, won BFI Early Development Funding and was selected for the imagineNATIVE 2020 Indigenous Screenwriting Intensive programme, supported by Netflix. Taratoa was part of Edinburgh’s Talent Lab in 2019. His short films have screened in festivals including Angers, Berlin, London and Busan, and have been broadcast on BBC2, BBC3, Film4 and Canal+. His award will support the development and writing of three projects, Mārama, Taumanu (Reclaim) and Emkhatsini (Between), an expanded version of his last short, shot in Eswatini.
Jonny Tull
CloseDistribution and Exhibition
Jonny is a freelance consultant working in distribution and exhibition based in Newcastle. After a career in programming and marketing, Jonny was made redundant in 2017 and used his 20+ years of experience in the independent cinema sector to set out on his own. He now works with filmmakers, venues, festivals and distributors, providing support to bring their projects to the public. Jonny is an Advisor on BFI FAN, is Chair of the Board at Queen’s Hall in Hexham, Northumberland, and is a visiting lecturer on an MA film course at Newcastle University. Jonny’s award will support the development of his distribution and exhibition consulting work and slate.