Image (Left-Right): Esme Hedley, Klaudia Slowik, Lauren May Dawkins, Louis Allen, Nathalie Mayer, Reannon Licorish, Siobhan Bahl, Tamar Mankassarian.
We are thrilled to announce the cohort for this year’s edition of Amplify: Production Talent. Supported by BBC and Channel 4, the initiative offers early-career production professionals the opportunity to connect with UK production company executives in the documentary TV sector; experience an international marketplace; widen their network and learn more about the industry.
Meet the cohort:
Esme Hedley
Esme began her career researching for shark documentaries and she has since worked on science, adventure and natural history programming. She has developed commissioned ideas for UK and US broadcasters and has worked across both editorial and production. Aiming one day to shoot and direct her own films, Esme is drawn to stories that focus on both people and planet and she hopes to use storytelling to help tackle the climate crisis.
Klaudia Slowik
Klaudia is a Polish-born Assistant Producer based in London. She has worked on a variety of documentaries for major international streamers, including an Emmy winning travel series. Last year Klaudia became a BAFTA member through the Connect scheme, which aims to elevate emerging creatives. Her goal is to become a director and to work on independent features that cover controversial topics, expose social injustices, and celebrate working class lives. Passionate about highlighting unheard voices, Klaudia seeks to create documentaries that spark conversations and leave a lasting impact. Currently she’s working on a new series at Raw TV.
Lauren May Dawkins
Lauren is an award-winning filmmaker and Grierson DocLab Alumna, currently a Researcher whose credits include BBC Studios’ ‘Secrets and Spies: A Nuclear Game’, and 72 Films’ ‘Mozart: Rise of a Genius’. Lauren’s short films have screened at the BFI and as part of national exhibitions. As a director, she seeks thought-provoking stories that provide fresh angles on culture and society. Lauren is enthusiastic about connecting with production company executives, engaging in documentary markets, and forming collaborations with fellow filmmakers.
Louis Allen
Starting out in radio, and now working in TV & film, Louis is documentary obsessed. He began his filmmaking journey in 2018 with his first short documentary ‘The Beeches’ focusing on a grassroots football team in the midlands which featured at festivals and on online platforms. Whilst making his own films and developing his practice he also wants to help make the industry a healthier, supportive and more inclusive industry. Dreaming of having a film shown at the Sheffield Doc Festival he is hoping the amplify production scheme is a step in the right direction.
Nathalie Mayer
Nathalie is a development and shooting assistant producer with a passion for innovative approaches to storytelling. From developing ideas to shooting documentaries, she loves seeing projects through from inception to production and is driven to find fresh ways of communicating untold experiences, challenging stigma and encouraging dialogue. Nathalie aims to become a shooting director of documentaries that experiment with the limitations of the genre while providing a platform for authentic stories told by the people at the heart of them. She was selected for Edinburgh TV Festival’s Ones to Watch 2022 and has a Masters in Documentary Filmmaking from The Northern Film School.
Reannon Licorish
Reannon Licorish (she/they) is a queer South London-based freelance Casting/Assistant Producer and qualified journalist with experience across factual and factual entertainment formats. She is working towards a career as a Casting Producer/Producer Director. Reannon is passionate about the extraordinary stories of everyday people, with a focus on marginalised communities. She is driven by the opportunity to amplify the voices we often don’t get to hear, through holding space for people to show up as their most authentic selves with empathy and care. Reannon strives to create impactful, engaging and thought-provoking documentaries that help people see themselves, and be inspired by the stories and triumphs of others.
Siobhan Bahl
Siobhan is an emerging filmmaker interested in embracing collective and docu-fiction filmmaking to question systems of representation and authorship. Currently a researcher she has worked for Raw TV and Wall to Wall across HETV and SVOD’s and aspires to be a producer-director on impact-led documentaries. She is an alumni of the PACT Indie scheme and holds a Masters in Documentary Filmmaking from UCL where she began filmmaking. In her work she returns to ideas around home and homemaking including: the experience of a living through a defective housing crisis in Donegal Ireland, classism of city regeneration, displacement from forced migration, and the diasporic histories and legacies specifically from her hometown of Leicester.
Tamar Mankassarian
Tamar has been a freelancer in media production for the last 4 years, working in a variety of industries, eventually landing in factual TV and culminating in winning the BBC Three Northern Pitch at Sheffield Doc Fest 2022 with ‘Stranger In My Family’ which was nominated for a 2024 Broadcast Award. She worked as a DV Director with Nine Lives Media on that film and as a Shooting AP on the ITV series ‘TikTok: Murder Gone Viral’. Her other freelance projects she produces under the name TrueMix Media, which has included editing, shooting and directing smaller independent or corporate projects.
Amplify: Production Talent is supported by BBC and Channel 4
