Bernadine has over 20 years’ experience developing, directing and producing across various documentary formats in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. As a member of SBS’s Unscripted team, Bernadine works across SBS’s slate of distinctive commissioned documentaries, championing diverse stories and exploring issues impacting contemporary Australia. She was formerly the Head of Documentary at Screen Australia where she led the unit providing support through development and production funding across all factual formats including features, television, online and XR.

Nanfu Wang is an award-winning Chinese filmmaker based in the U.S. She is a recipient of 2020 MacArthur Genius Grant. Her feature documentaries include ‘Hooligan Sparrow’ (Sundance 2016), ‘I Am Another You’ (SXSW 2017, Special Jury Prize winner), ‘One Child Nation’ (Sundance 2019, Grand Jury Prize Winner), and ‘In the Same Breath’ (Sundance 2021). 

Wang received four Emmy nominations for her films. She is also a recipient of numerous awards including an Independent Spirit Award, Peabody Award, George Polk Award, and the Ridenhour Award.

Originally from a remote village in China, Wang overcame poverty and a lack of access to formal education to earning three Master’s degrees from Shanghai University, Ohio University and New York University. She teaches cinematography and editing at New York University.

Pauline is A Yaegl woman from North Coast NSW she has worked as a storyteller and producer in film and TV for 25 years.

She is founder and artistic director of Winda Film Festival in Sydney, was the programmer for imagineNATIVE media +arts festival in Toronto, and is co-creator of NativeSLAM – a 72-hour Indigenous film challenge held at Maoriland Film Festival in Otaki – and nativeSLAM the feature.

Known for her extensive work in championing and producing the works of Australia’s emerging and Indigenous filmmakers, Pauline has spent the last 20 years helping to develop and mentor other filmmakers and their voices. Her roles have included being the series producer for ABC’s Messagestick from 2000-2004, the Indigenous training officer at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School from 2009 to 2013; and from 2013-15 she was the Commissioning Editor and Head of Internal Productions for NITV, creating among other things, the landmark initiative “Our Stories, Our Way, Everyday”. In 2015 she won the Stanley Hawes Award 2015 for Contribution to Australian Documentaries.

She is currently an Associate Professor, Manager of Cultural Resilience Hub, Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education & Research at the UTS. Pauline also shares her wisdom, industry experience and integrity with emerging creative entrepreneurs through Creative Plus Business. As a NSW Treasury endorsed creative specialist, Pauline helps independent filmmakers and other creative people to strengthen their financial sustainability so they can continue to make extraordinary art and stories with empowered, and viable, creative models.

As Vice President, Programming & Development, Bill Gardner oversees content strategy, development and production for the PBS Primetime schedule in the genres of history, culture, natural history and science.

During his time at PBS, projects Gardner shepherded have won three Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, a Dupont-Columbia Award, an Imagen Award, an NAACP Image Award and numerous Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and Wildscreen Awards.

Bill is particularly focused on collaborating with producers and distribution partners to reach younger and more diverse audiences and expand content reach across distribution platforms. He also oversees the PBS-BBC co-production partnership, with successful multi-platform focused output such as ‘Big Blue Live’, ‘Wild Alaska Live’, ‘Earth’s Natural Wonders’ and ‘Spy in the Wild’ in the Science and Natural History genres, and ‘Basquiat: Rage to Riches’ in the Arts & Culture space.  Some of the international co-productions he has developed or commissioned have earned several BAFTA and Grierson Awards.

Bill holds a Masters Degree in cultural anthropology, has taught university programs in Arkansas and Marrakech, Morocco and is on the board of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival.

Dorota Lech is a Polish-born, Toronto and Los Angeles-based film programmer and independent curator. Since 2013 she has worked for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where she is an International Programmer focussing on films from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe as well as the Caucasus and Western Asia. She also produces the Hot Docs Forum, a pitching event aimed at garnering financing for international documentaries, at North America’s largest documentary festival. Dorota is also a programmer at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and holds a double M.A. in Political Science and Gender Studies from McGill University.

Andrea Ulbrick is an award-winning director and producer with an award-winning domestic and international career spanning 32 years. Since 2016, Andrea has been a Screen Investment Manager at Screen NSW and has managed more than 300 film and TV productions across a range of genres including TV drama such as the award-winning ‘Mystery Road’ Series 2 (2019), dozens of award-winning feature documentaries including ‘Firestarter’ (2020), the Walkley-winning 3-part documentary series ‘Revelation’ (2020) and the multi award- winning ‘Backtrack Boys’ (2018), as well as VR content including the Emmy-award winning film ‘Awavena’ (2019).

Julie is the Manager for ABC Factual, commissions include ‘Reef Live’, ‘Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds’, ‘Further Back In Time for Dinner’, ‘Anh’s Brush with Fame’, ‘Shaun Micallef’s On the Sauce’, ‘Aftermath: Beyond Black Saturday’, ‘Australia Talks’, ‘Restoration Australia’, ‘Brazen Hussies’ and ‘Tick F**king Tock’ (the story of the Doug Anthony Allstars).

Julie has worked extensively as an executive producer, series producer and director across a wide range of genres.

Julie worked as an executive producer for ITV Studios – Australia, across a broad range of programmes including factual, lifestyle, entertainment, comedy and long form documentaries. Julie is passionate about exploring stories that examine social issues and push the boundaries with innovative storytelling techniques.

The ABC Factual team consistently produces high quality, award winning programs across a wide range of genres that connect with audiences on a variety of ABC platforms. ABC Factual is responsible for thought-provoking and inspiring programs such as ‘Fight for Planet A’, ‘Revelation’, ‘Love on the Spectrum’, ‘Employable Me’, ‘War on Waste’, ‘Magical Land of Oz’, ‘Back In Time For Dinner’, ‘Exposed: The Case of Keli Lane’ and ‘Don’t Stop the Music’.

Hollie is currently the Director of Australian Programs at Doc Society and Director of the arts not-for-profit Schoolhouse Studios in Melbourne.

As a documentary filmmaker, Hollie’s films have screened at festivals and broadcasted within Australia and internationally. The Opposition is Hollie’s debut feature documentary produced by Media Stockade that world premiered at Hot Docs and IDFA in 2016 before winning the Grand Prize at FIFO, screening at the UN Human Rights Council, winning Best Documentary Feature at the Oz Flix Independent Film Awards and screening in over 35 countries. Hollie’s latest short film Unbalanced recently premiered on Australian newspapers The Age/Sydney Morning Herald’s Vox Dox series.

Hollie on the Board of the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) and the Castlemaine Documentary Festival (CDoc). In her previous work she has been a freelance tutor in Documentary Directing at NIDA and AFTRS, Co-Director of The Artists Guild, selected for MECCA Shark Island M-Power Program and Doc Society’s Global Impact Producers Squad.

Andrea Ulbrick is an award-winning director and producer with an award-winning domestic and international career spanning 32 years. Since 2016, Andrea has been a Screen Investment Manager at Screen NSW and has managed more than 300 film and TV productions across a range of genres including TV drama such as the award-winning ‘Mystery Road’ Series 2 (2019), dozens of award-winning feature documentaries including ‘Firestarter’ (2020), the Walkley-winning 3-part documentary series ‘Revelation’ (2020) and the multi award- winning ‘Backtrack Boys’ (2018), as well as VR content including the Emmy-award winning film ‘Awavena’ (2019).

Jeanie Davison is the Industry Development Manager at Screenworks, a non-profit registered charity based in Northern NSW that supports and services the screen industry across regional Australia, providing industry and professional development, networking initiatives, opportunities and services for screen content creators and workers.

Prior to Screenworks, Jeanie managed the documentary development slate at Screen Australia and oversaw joint initiatives including the ABC ‘Art Bites’ series and the Al Jazeera ‘Witness’ commissioning initiative.

Before Screen Australia, Jeanie spent 10 years in the UK producing TV programmes for the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and Five, before taking on head of factual and head of development roles for leading independent production companies in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

She’s developed and produced factual programs and documentaries for many international broadcasters, notably Discovery, History Channel, National Geographic, ABC and Seven (Australia), TVNZ and TV3 (New Zealand).

She also has extensive experience field producing and directing TV and digital content around the world for high-profile non-profit organisations including UNICEF, Amnesty International and Comic Relief.

lIikka Vehkalahti’s activities as an independent producer from 2015 forward includes the production of Sundance awarded ‘Machines’ by Rahul Jain and ‘Raghu Rain: An Unframed Portrait’ by Avani Rai, which premiered at IDFA 2017. He was a co-producer of ‘Winnie’ by Pascal Lamche, which was awarded at Sundance, and ‘Chris the Swiss’ by Anja Komfelt, which premiered at Cannes 2018. He is currently finishing the production of ‘Invisible Demons’ by Rahul Jain.

Rough Cut Service (roughcutservice.com) collects some of the best editors in the world to provide online support to documentary film makers with challenging productions. RCS has worked already with more than 100 films from nearly 40 countries, among them winners at Sundance, IDFA and the Berlinare. 

Iikka is one of the executive producers in Dare To Dream Asia and is part of the building an all African project Generation Africa (www.steps.co.za).

He was a commissioning editor for the Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE Documentaries, Finland 1998-2015; executive producer for ‘Steps For The Future’ and one of the series producers for ‘Why Democracy’. A visiting professor in Tampere University 2011-2012, he has been involved in or supported numerous international well known documentaries like ‘Act of Killing’, ‘Look Of Silence’, ‘Armadillo’, ‘Happiness’, ‘Don’t Breath’, ‘Placebo’, ‘The Ambassadors’ and ‘Vivan les Antipodes’. 

Before YLE Iikka directed awarded documentaries for Epidem and Musafilm; among them ‘Past is Present’, ‘Amal’, ‘Inam’, ‘Naila’, ‘A Man from the Shadow’ and ‘Tehri – Two Journeys’.

Iikka has been lecturing, leading workshops and having masterclasses in different European countries: Australia, Kenya, Russia, USA, India, South Africa, DRC, Nepal and Canada.