Al Cossar is a screen culture professional based in Melbourne. He is currently Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Film Festival, where he has also worked in roles as Programmer and Associate Artistic Director since 2011. Previously he was Program Director for the Portable Film Festival, a founding programmer, and subsequent Board Member for the Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, Festival Manager for Flickerfest. He was also a television film critic for ABC News Breakfast, and previously worked in post production supervision in his home country of New Zealand.

Alan Erson is Managing Director and Executive Producer at WildBear Entertainment, leading creative teams developing and producing history, wildlife, science and engineering titles for global audiences. In previous roles he was General Manager Australia and Head of Factual at Essential Media and Entertainment (prior to its acquisition by Kew Media Group) and ABC Australia’s Head of Factual. His EP credits include Australia Come Fly with Me (SBS), Barrenjoey Road (ABC), Waltzing the Dragon with Benjamin Law (ABC), Playing with Sharks (Madman, Dogwoof), Todd Sampson’s Body Hack (Ten, Discovery) and Boss Croc (Nat Geo).

Charlie Phillips is the Head of Video at The Guardian, commissioning and acquiring new documentaries from all around the world for the Guardian documentaries strand, and managing all moving image for the Guardian’s platforms, including news, sport, and culture as well as documentaries. Films in the documentary strand have been multi award-winning, including a nomination for the short documentary Oscar in 2019. Charlie was previously Deputy Director at Sheffield Doc/Fest for 7 years before joining The Guardian in 2014 to create the documentary strand, and prior to that he was Editor of FourDocs for Channel 4.

Donovan is a founding partner of Beach House Pictures and amongst Asia’s top documentary and unscripted execs. As CD, Donovan oversees business and content development for BHP, strategizing growth in key markets like the US, China and Japan, as well as developing non-scripted and scripted content with SVOD players such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+; and in China, with Tencent, Bilibili and Youku to name a few. Over the past 15 years, Donovan has produced highly rated shows such as Discovery International’s flagship series ED STAFFORD: FIRST MAN OUT and ED STAFFORD: MAN WOMAN CHILD WILD; brand supported Nat Geo series RECORD RIDES; CCTV9’s ART OF CRAFT series; and the CELEBRATION NATION series for Tencent and Nat Geo. His award-winning shows span travel (LONELY PLANET SIX DEGREES, TLC), food & adventure (NOMAD CHEF, TLC) and science & engineering (MEGASTRUCTURES: SINGAPORE’S VEGAS, Nat Geo). Donovan was Executive Producer for 15 ground-breaking 3D documentaries for Discovery and Nat Geo, as well as the blockbuster Nat Geo/Tencent special CHINA FROM ABOVE, which pulled in a record 300 million views in China. Season 2 of ED STAFFORD: FIRST MAN OUT in China broke 45 million views, unprecedented for Bilibili in 2020. Donovan just released a feature documentary narrated by KATE BECKINSALE called TOP DOG INDIA as director and executive producer. Donovan is a member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and is a sought-after speaker and judge at international TV conferences and festivals.

Mat has been Chief Executive Officer and Creative Director of the Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) since February 2019. His inaugural edition of the festival was presented in October 2020 amid COVID-19 restrictions; the event was triumphant. Mat oversees the curation of the AFF Investment Fund in addition to the festival and is cultivating a year-round calendar of activity. Mat was AFF’s Program Manager since 2015 but his association with the festival actually goes back to 2009. In those early days, his other job was Exhibition Manager at Adelaide’s Mercury Cinema. Box office revenue at the Mercury increased by 315 per cent under his watch. No, he didn’t program Hollywood blockbusters, rather he curated and managed the delivery of intriguing, specialist and entertaining fare including Adelaide Cinematheque, Silent ReMasters, the Australian International Documentary Conference’s Doc Week, the very successful year-round Seniors on Screen program, six editions of the Adelaide Festival Centre’s OzAsia Festival On Screen program and more. Before returning to his home state, Mat was Program Manager for three years at the Brisbane International Film Festival. Previously he produced the 15/15 Film Festival, a filmmaking and screening event that toured the nation. With his work in cinemas and other festivals including Melbourne Festival of Arts and the Midsumma Festival, he’s clocked up two decades in film exhibition and events. Mat was named in Screen International’s Future Leaders list in 2019 and has participated on various juries and panels. He holds degrees in media and cinema studies as well as in environmental science and he sits on the Festivals Adelaide Board.

Mitchell Stanley began his career as a producer line producing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s series MOVE IT MOB STYLE, which was broadcast on NITV and ABC3.  He went on to produce COLOUR THEORY with Richard Bell, an eight-part documentary series before writing and producing the critically acclaimed documentary, SERVANT OR SLAVE, garnering the highest audience viewership to date for National Indigenous Television, and winning the audience award at the Harlem International and Antenna Documentary film festivals. He recently produced Warwick Thornton’s documentary television series, THE BEACH, as well as Jack Steele’s short film BETWEEN TWO LINES selected for Sydney Film Festival and Cinefest Oz.

Rachel Corbett is a media professional with almost twenty years experience.  During her career, Rachel has specialised in podcasting and radio working both in front of and behind the microphone.  The first 12 years of her career were spent as a breakfast and drive host working for some of the biggest radio stations in Australia including Hit 104.1, Triple M Melbourne and Sydney and 92.9 in Perth.  After leaving radio in 2013 Rachel started teaching podcasting and radio at AFTRS in Sydney before creating her own online podcasting course, PodSchool, in 2016.  From 2017 – early 2020 Rachel was the Head of Podcasts at Mamamia where she grew the network from 15 to over 35 shows and the downloads to over 90 million.  Rachel is currently Head of Podcasts & Digital Content at Nova Entertainment as well as a regular host on The Project.

Co-founder and Director of the award-winning creative studio Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF), Robin has directed a myriad of immersive experiences, large-scale installations and live performances.

Robin is based in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, in the north of England where the natural world forms a source of constant inspiration. Exploring new sensory perspectives that challenge our relationship to the world around us plays a key role in Robin and the team at MLF’s work. Robin’s interest in full immersion lead to a 5 year deep-dive into virtual production and interaction techniques, where a focus on realtime deformable object tracking has informed the development of mixed-reality storytelling methods for new forms of audience engagement.

The live aspect of Robin’s work has involved touring installations and productions to some of the world’s largest venues, concert halls and cultural spaces. Robin lead the team to conceptualise and direct iconic shows for the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase (Cannes Palais, France). He’s worked with a range of musical acts including U2, Aphex Twin and Lenny Kravitz. As creative director musings such as ‘do dolphins dream in sonar?’ and  ‘can you taste in your dreams?’ have inspired key productions in the MLF conceptual / directorial roster such as A Colossal Wave, Sweet Dreams and most recently – a collaborative production with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Epic Games, Philharmonia Orchestra & Manchester International Festival – the 2021 production ‘Dream’.

Yaara Ozery is the Program Manager and a senior programmer at Docaviv – The Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival. She holds an M.A. from the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Tel-Aviv University, and teaches various courses in film theory, documentary cinema and women’s cinema. Her essays have been published on various platforms in both English and Hebrew. Yaara is the initiator of Mirrors- The First Women’s Film and Television Conference at Tel Aviv University. 

Pic: Vladimir Belinski

Yasmin Elayat is an Emmy-award winning immersive director whose work pushes the boundaries of immersive narrative and participatory experiences. Yasmin is Co-Founder at Scatter, where she heads content, production and marketing initiatives. Scatter is recognized for pioneering the emerging language of Volumetric Filmmaking through its original volumetric film productions and it’s AR/VR creativity tools. Scatter’s first product Depthkit is the most widely used toolkit for accessible volumetric video capture.

Yasmin directed the Emmy award-winning Zero Days VR (Sundance 2017) a documentary about cyber warfare and the Stuxnet virus. Yasmin co-directed Blackout (Tribeca 2017) an immersive documentary inviting New Yorkers to share their stories in their own voice. She is the co-creator of 18DaysInEgypt, an interactive documentary about the Egyptian Revolution that was lauded as one the Moments of Innovation in Participatory Documentary. Upcoming projects include Changing Same, a magical-realist, afro-futurist virtual reality film which explores the cyclical history of racial injustice in America. Changing Same is a co-production between RADA Film Group and Scatter.

Yasmin’s work has won multiple awards and exhibited at various festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SIGGRAPH, Festival de Cannes, and the World Economic Forum. Yasmin is also a United States Artists 2020 Fellow