Steve Smith
Steve Smith is a BAFTA award-winning single and multi-camera director who has helped create some of the UK’s most popular television programmes, including The Graham Norton Show, The Great British Bake Off – An Extra Slice, John Bishop in Conversation and Dara O’Briain’s Go 8 Bit.
Steve started his television career as an editor, before moving into production and training as a studio director at the BBC in Manchester. Steve also works as a sustainable production consultant and is a BAFTA Albert Ambassador, promoting sustainability within the television industry.
In 2010, Steve became a BAFTA Youth Mentor and also works as an ambassador for the Public Service Broadcasting Trust advising on their ITV Fixers project. Steve joined the board of Directors UK in 2013, becoming Chair in 2017.
Benjamin Caron
Benjamin Caron is a Golden Globe, Emmy and BAFTA nominated British film and television director.
Benjamin started his TV career directing documentaries and live music broadcasts for artists such as Jay Z. He followed this in 2006 with The Heist for Channel 4, a BAFTA and RTS nominated one-hour Derren Brown special.
2012 saw Benjamin move into drama, directing Skins and earning himself an RTS nomination for Best Director. The debut season of My Mad Fat Diary followed and was subsequently nominated for an Emmy, BAFTA and RTS Award for Best Drama Series.
His first feature film, Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This, was released in 2013. Starring David Threlfall, Helen McCrory and Amanda Redman, it was BAFTA nominated for Best Supporting Actor and BPG nominated for Best Single Drama.
In 2015, Benjamin directed the multi-BAFTA, Emmy and Golden Globe winning detective series Wallander for the BBC, starring Kenneth Branagh. In 2016, he directed the finale episode and one-off special of Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and Mark Gatiss.
Benjamin directed episodes for the first two seasons of The Crown for Netflix. Season one aired to rave reviews, won a Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series and was nominated for three Emmys. The Crown season three premieres in November 2019, with Benjamin serving as both Lead Director and Executive Producer. Season 4 lands in 2020.
Yarit Dor
Yarit Dor is an Intimacy Coordinator. Co-founder of Intimacy Directors International UK and co-director of Moving Body Arts Ltd. Her credits include: Adult Material , The Nevers, The Wheel of Time, White Lines, Spanish Princess.
In theatre she is the first to be credited as an Intimacy Director on the West End for Death of A Salesman starring Wendell Pierce. She has been involved in creating new guidelines for Equity, Stage Directors UK and Directors UK.
Dr. Ian Manborde
Dr. Ian Manborde is Equity's Equalities and Diversity Organiser. Equity is the UK trade union for actors, performers and allied professionals. In this role he oversees the development of strategy, policy and campaigns which support the fair and equal treatment of Equity members.
Miranda Howard-Williams
Miranda has directed BBC detective drama Shakespeare and Hathaway, and is also a regular director on BBC’s flagship daytime series Doctors. Alongside this she has directed several award-winning shorts which led her to being selected for the BFI Network x BAFTA Crew Programme and the Berlinale Talent Lab as a writer/director. Her most recent short, Evie, won First Prize for Best Sci-Fi Short at Rhode Island Film Festival.
Sal Pearman
Sal Pearman (she/her) has been working in Learning and Development for over 13 years. She specializes in Human Resource Development, Equality Diversity and Inclusion, Consent, Boundaries and LGBTQI+ Sex Education, Wellbeing and Positive Workplaces, Meaningful Work, and organisation-wide culture projects. Within the last year Sal has worked with clients including Picturehouse, BAFTA, The British Library and the British Film Institute. Sal is non-binary and uses she/her pronouns.
Susanna White
BAFTA award-winning director Susanna White is known for her wide-ranging body of work with some of the world's top writers from Tom Stoppard to David Simon. Most recently in film, Susanna directed Woman Walks Ahead starring Jessica Chastain, Michael Greyeyes and Sam Rockwell. Previous works include Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang starring Emma Thompson, and Our Kind of Traitor starring Ewan McGregor. Susanna has also directed on the last two series of David Simon's The Deuce for HBO.
Tash Moore
Tash Moore is Directors UK’s lead campaigner tackling bullying and harassment in the screen industries. Her latest campaign project ‘Directing Nudity and Simulated Sex’ aims to create a safer working environment for directors and performers. Outside campaigning she is a short film producer and screenwriter and is currently developing the spy romance feature film Internal Affairs.
Adam Suschitzky
Adam is a third-generation cinematographer. As a child he grew up spending many memorable hours on his father’s film sets all over the world. However, it was a love of black and white photography that first caught Adam’s attention. His grandfather and father shared a darkroom in the family home and Adam would routinely watch in amazement the images appear out of the darkness as if by magic!
After working with his father on features as his assistant for a few years, Adam attended the National Film & Television School in Beaconsfield. Graduating in 1997, Adam began his career simultaneously in advertising and documentary films. He shot for a large variety of brands all over the world whilst also making documentaries with established film makers.
At the start of the new millennium Adam turned his attention to long form TV dramas in the UK, photographing award winning series such as Spooks, Hustle and Life on Mars. He often shot period pieces such as Jane Austen’s Emma, Upstairs Downstairs, Titanic and The Bletchley Circle.
Within the next ten years Adam had photographed some of the most successful and creative dramas in the UK.
In recent years Adam has been focusing on the North American TV drama market. He has already been shooting for some of the biggest names in the industry such as Steven Spielberg’s Amblin TV, Bad Robot’s ‘11/22/63’, AMC’s Fear The Walking Dead and Paramount’s Yellowstone with Kevin Costner. He has just completed work on a new adaptation of The Right Stuff produced by Leonardo Di Caprio for The National Geographic channel.
Adam is a member of the BSC and joined IATSE in the USA in 2018.
Anna Thomson
Anna has directed and series produced more than 30 specialist factual films, including Portrait Artist of the Year, Days That Shook the World, Al Murray’s German Adventure, Patisserie with Michel Roux, and A Great British Air Disaster, She has directed a Sundance-backed creative documentary Yoghurt Utopia, short fiction and branded content. Anna is a Directors UK Board member and has been chosen to participate in Skillset’s prestigious Series Producer training scheme.
Ben Goold
Ben Goold is the Executive Producer of The Last Czars, Nutopia’s most recent drama-documentary series for Netflix. At Nutopia, he also created the Emmy Award-winning drama-doc series America The Story of Us. Other recent credits include Jesus: His Life for History, and The ‘80s/’90s Greatest for National Geographic. Ben’s previous credits include Emmy-nominated drama-documentary Stonehenge Decoded, and the BAFTA Award-winning drama-documentary mini-series Ancient Egyptians.
Dan Clifton
Dan Clifton is an award-winning writer, director and producer working across documentary and fiction. Docudrama credits include Web of Lies, Paranormal Witness and Stephen Hawking’s Universe.
Dan has written and directed two award-winning shorts: Patient 39, which he adapted from a William Boyd short story; and mathematical thriller The Calculus of Love, starring Keith Allen. His first feature is scheduled to go into production in 2020 with producers Bill Marks and Christine Hartland.
Emma Frank
Emma Frank is a BAFTA winning freelance writer/director. In her 17 years directing she’s made everything from make-over shows to travelogues, cooking shows to crime docs, dance films to living history, and more recent ventures into drama docs.
Hereward Pelling
Hereward is an Emmy-nominated showrunner and director with 15 years’ experience working on blue chip drama documentaries. Specialising in historical programming, he has formatted hugely successful returnable formats such as Nazi Megastructures as well as standalones such as America: Promised Land. Most recently, Hereward oversaw the major Netflix 6-part docudrama series The Last Czars. Hereward has filmed in over 50 countries worldwide and, as well as directing and series producing, has operated extensively as a documentary cameraman and drama DOP.
Christiana Ebohon-Green
Christiana is an award-winning drama director. Over the last seventeen years she has directed Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle, Call the Midwife, Father Brown, Holby City, Doctors, EastEnders, Hollyoaks and Emmerdale. She has also directed a number of short films, including a Creative England supported short, Some Sweet Oblivious Antidote starring Sir Lenny Henry, Wunmi Mosaku, Colin Salmon, and Fatima Ko.
Caz Stuart
Caz Stuart has over twenty years’ experience as a documentary filmmaker, and is a self-shooter who also edits. She is skilled in making people feel comfortable enough to be honest about subjects they'd rather not talk about. Her credits include Ramsay’s Best Restaurant, A Brush With Fame, Women who Kill, Life on Heroin and The Truth About Beauty.
Barnaby Peel
Barnaby Peel is a documentary director specialising in observational films and series. He has his own production company but does much of his work in collaboration with other independent producers.
He regularly works as photographer on his projects, shooting much of his material himself. Barnaby makes films for a range of British and international broadcasters, from the BBC and Channel 4 to Netflix.
Kate Cheeseman
Kate Cheeseman is a BAFTA-winning director working in both film and television. She was awarded a BAFTA, the Prix Danube Jury Prize and several other prizes and nominations for the serial and TV Film Pig Heart Boy, and also directed the series finale of Call The Midwife. Kate’s most recent short, What Happened to Evie, won Best International Short Fiction at Galway Film Fleadh and San Jose International Film Festival.
James Higgins
James Higgins is a factual P/D, filmmaker, and documentary director with a track record of dealing with highly sensitive situations and developing relationships with contributors. His credits include Coast, Harbour Lives, Class of 92: Out of Their League, A&E On the Road and The Real Housewives of Cheshire.
Martin Kemp
Martin Kemp is a highly experienced, award-winning Series Producer and Director who has worked for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, Discovery, National Geographic, History and Smithsonian.
Martin has shot and directed on all seven continents, including three months in Antarctica and six months overland through Africa. Credits include Amazon, Buried Secrets of WWII and Lost Kingdoms of South America.
Nicola Quilter
Nicola Quilter worked in Film, TV and Theatre in Australia, came to London for the weekend and stayed for 15 years. She was a resident character on Home And Away, worked for the BBC, Radio 4, ABC, Channel 7, SBS, Southern Star, Sydney Theatre Company, Praxis Theatre (Ireland), La mama (Melbourne), and The Stables (Sydney). She has made many short films, and is currently raising finance to make her first feature.
Nimer Rashed
Nimer Rashed is a British director and writer, based in London. His debut short film Baghdad Express featuring Riz Ahmed screened at festivals worldwide, and his work for shows such as Casualty and Holby City led to his being named on the BBC’s New Talent Hotlist. He has also recently worked as 2nd Unit Director on Mike Bartlett's Press for Lookout Point, and on Studio Lambert/Amazon’s The Feed.
Paul Wilkins
Paul Wilkins is a director with over 15 years of experience in Film and TV production. His credits include The Ghost Writer, Blink, 7 Lives and Call Me.
Richard Elson
Richard’s career spans BBC drama, documentaries and award-winning theatre. Credits include A Christmas Star, featuring Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan, and 78 Breaths, winner of best short at Sheffield Doc/Fest.
He is also known for the acclaimed BBC show M.I.High and Shadow Trade, an undercover investigation into Thailand’s illegal dogmeat trade. He has worked for numerous NGOs such as Oxfam and Save the Children.
Bill Anderson
Vice Chair of Directors UK, Bill directs and occasionally writes TV drama including, in order of increasing CGI, Lewis, Dockers, Guardians, The Mill, Spooks, Mr Selfridge, Sword Of Honour, and Dr Who where pixels of student-eating alien lice were informed by the very real bees he keeps on his roof.
Katja Bego
Katja Bego is a principal researcher in Nesta’s technology futures team. Her work focuses on studying the impact of emerging technologies such as AI on our societies, and how these new innovations can be harnessed for social good and for the benefit of everyone. She regularly comments on topics relating to the future internet in outlets such as Wired, the BBC, Financial Times and The Guardian.
Owen Braekke-Carroll
Owen Braekke-Carroll is a compositing lead and supervisor, based in Framestore's London office. He has a strong interest in emerging visual effects technology, and his recent credits include Pokémon Detective Pikachu, The Boys for Amazon, and Black Mirror for Netflix.
Sham00k
Using the latest in AI and machine learning technology, Sham00k creates highly realistic and entertaining deep fake videos for all form of media outlets.
David Keating
An experienced feature film director and screenwriter, David has run training for Directors UK, BAFTA, The ICA and Channel 4 and at film schools and festivals internationally. He currently lectures in film directing at the National Film School in Dublin and continues to direct films and TV.
Jake Garriock
Jake Garriock is Head of Distribution Strategy and Group Publicity at Curzon. He has over 12 years of experience in independent film distribution, most recently working on campaigns for The Souvenir, Cold War, Apostasy and The Square.
Jermain Julien
Jermain Julien made his professional directorial debut in 2013, on series 2 of the award-winning CBBC drama, Wolfblood. He’s since worked on The Dumping Ground, Holby City, Casualty and Death in Paradise. Jermain is currently setting up a short film called Hot Water which will star Rome Flynn from the hit series How to Get Away with Murder and Julia Sawalha in a pivotal role.
Lenka Koppova
Lenka Koppova is #OrganicSocial Strategist and Trainer. She’s helping badass entrepreneurs to achieve their goals by leveraging the power social media marketing (the right way).
She’s also the founder of Cambridge Social Media, a community-driven organisation helping local businesses and non-profits to get to grips with social media. As part of CSM, she’s running regular meetups, workshops, as well as an annual social media conference based in Cambridge, focused on helping businesses to harness the power of social media.
Laura Adams
Laura Adams is Head of Member Services at Directors UK. Before this, Laura programmed films & events for the BFI. She holds a BA in Drama and Film and a Film and Communications MA from QMUL. Previously on the Birds Eye View board, Laura is currently on the London Comedy Film Festival advisory panel.
Tom Harper
Tom Harper was born and brought up in North London. He started out making award winning short films (Cubs, 2006 / Cherries, 2007), before moving on to direct a range of television drama including Misfits (2009, E4), This is England ‘86 (2010, Channel 4), and Peaky Blinders (2013, BBC2 / Netflix).
In 2016, Tom directed all 6 episodes of the multi-award winning War & Peace for BBC1, starring Paul Dano, Lily James and James Norton. The series topped ratings and gained rave reviews with The Telegraph calling it “the greatest costume drama of the decade”.
Tom’s feature film work includes The Scouting Book for Boys (2010), The Woman in Black: Angel of Death (2015), and War Book (2015), which opened the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Wild Rose – starring Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters and Sophie Okonedo – was released in summer 2019 to widespread critical acclaim. Tom’s most recent feature The Aeronauts, starring Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne, premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and will be released in the UK in November.
Charles Sturridge
Charles Sturridge’s television work includes the award-winning adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, A Foreign Field and Gulliver’s Travels which won 5 out of a total of 11 Primetime Emmy Nominations.
In 2000 Charles wrote and directed Longitude with Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons and Shackleton with Kenneth Branagh - both winning Best Drama Serial BAFTAs. More recently, Charles has directed MotherFatherSon, Sanditon and Marcella.
His film credits include Runners, A Handful of Dust, Where Angels Fear to Tread, and the BAFTA-winning Fairytale and Lassie. Charles is a former Chair of Directors UK.
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