We are delighted to announce our 2025 Film Programme Team as well as our team of Programme Consultants and Advisers, who will be selecting films for our 32nd edition, taking place 18 - 23 June.
Our Creative Director Raul Niño Zambrano leads our programming team and is supported by Film Programme Manager, Mita Suri, who has been with the festival since 2019, and Short Film Programmes Curator, Jamie Allan, who returns to our programming team for the fifth year running. We also welcome a team of 4 Programme Consultants and 17 Programme Advisers, whose expertise and perspective spans the full spectrum of the documentary industry.
Meet our Film Programme Team
Raul Niño Zambrano - (he/him)
Creative Director
Raul Niño Zambrano joined Sheffield DocFest in 2021 and was confirmed as Creative Director in 2023 ahead of the 30th edition of the festival. Prior this, he was previously Senior Programmer at IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) from 2008-2021. During his tenure at IDFA, Raul conducted a ground-breaking study on the position of women within the documentary world The Female Gaze (2014) and initiated the IDFA Queer Day (2013, ongoing). In addition to being a lead programmer on the overall selection, he curated such programmes as Emerging Voices from Southeast Asia, and Cinema do Brasil. He has participated in many international festivals as a juror (Hot Docs, DocPoint, Morelia Film Festival) and as an expert/tutor (DocMontevideo, FESPACO, Brasil CineMundi, If/Then Shorts Global Pitch, DMZ Docs). Raul followed his true passion for documentary film, studying Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, after working in the Netherlands as an engineer specialising in wind energy. Raul introduced the Podcast Pitch and the First Impressions strand to Sheffield DocFest, showing his commitment to present all the spectrum of the documentary form.
Mita Suri - (she/her)
Film Programme Manager
With a background in community cinema exhibition, Mita Suri started working at Sheffield DocFest as a volunteer, then supported the DocCircuit tour as a Distribution Trainee. In her current role as Film Programme Manager, she supervises the delivery of the Film Programme for the festival. She is primarily responsible for DocFest’s many external relationships including filmmakers, national film institutes and distributors; she also manages the submissions process, runs the Youth Jury Programme and leads on DocFest's year-round screenings programme across the UK.
Jamie Allan - (he/him)
Short Film Programmes Curator
Jamie joined Sheffield DocFest in 2021 as the Curator of the DocFest Exchange and now heads up the festival’s short film programme and wider community programming. With a background in documentary filmmaking and community cinema, he is passionate about how collective filmmaking practices and transdisciplinary collaboration can create space for alternative forms of storytelling and exhibition.
Previously he was Curator of the Artist Film programmes at HOME, Manchester’s centre for international contemporary art, theatre and film. He has a Masters in Documentary Film Directing from the DocNomads itinerant film school in Lisbon, Budapest and Brussels, and a Post-Masters in Collective Practices from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm.
Meet our Programme Consultants
Alfredo Mora Manzano - (he/him)
Ecuadorian documentary film producer, programmer, and writer with over twenty years of experience in Latin American cinema. Alfredo has produced the feature documentaries Abuelos by Carla Valencia (nominated for Best First Feature at IDFA), Territorio by Alexandra Cuesta (FIDMarseille, BAFICI), The Great-grandmother Has Alzheimer's (DOCTV, Cartagena), and The Beach of Enchaquirados (IDFA, Locarno), which received awards at DocLisboa, MajorDocs, Guadalajara, and Lima—both directed by Iván Mora Manzano. He served as Executive Director of EDOC (Encounters of the Other Cinema), the longest-running and most prestigious film festival in Ecuador. He currently resides in Quito, where he is producing the feature documentaries The Movement of Things (Berlinale Talents, Guggenheim, McDowell Colony) by Alexandra Cuesta and Compadre Fannie (IDFA Forum, EURODOC) by Iván Mora Manzano for La República Invisible and Tóxica Films.
Carmen Thompson (she/her)
Carmen is a programmer, curator and cultural producer based in Edinburgh. Her interests centre around cinema from the African continent and the Black diaspora, perhaps most specifically at their intersections with non-fiction storytelling. She currently works as Head of Distribution & Special Projects for award-winning film exhibition and distribution company We Are Parable, and as a programmer for Red Sea Film Festival. Carmen also sits on the boards of British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) and Glasgow Film, and is chair of the board of Document Human Rights Film Festival. She is a BAFTA, BAFTA Scotland and European Film Academy voting member.
Chloë Roddick (she/her)
Chloë has been a film programmer and writer for nearly 15 years. Currently based in Mexico City she is a Senior Programmer for the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), where she works on both international and Mexican cinema strands. She is also currently Head of Mexican Documentary for that Festival. Between 2019 and 2021 she was the Director of Programming for the Tulum International Film Festival (FICTU). She is a programme consultant for Sheffield DocFest and watches docs for Ambulante and SXSW.
Chloë writes about film for Sight & Sound, and also curates and assists on programmes of Mexican cinema for festivals and institutions like Il Cinema Ritrovato, the BFI, MoMA and the Cinémathèque française, among others.
Kim Young woo (he/him)
KIM Young woo studied visual arts & TV at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, US. He worked for the selection committee of Busan International Film Festival as a programmer in charge of Asian cinema until 2019, and worked for DMZ DOCS Korea as a programmer until 2021. KIM is a board member of the Seoul Independent Film Festival and currently works as a programmer. Kim is also working for Red Sea International Film Festival as a programmer in charge of Asian/Korean cinema and has been working as a program advisor to LOCARNO, IDFA, and other festivals in the EU.
Meet our Programme Advisers
Aderinsola Ajao (she/her)
Aderinsola Ajao is an arts manager and film curator based in Lagos, Nigeria. Her work cuts across the creative and cultural industries, and her writing has appeared in publications including Chimurenga, Africiné, Awotele, MUBI’s Notebook, Glänta, The Sun, La Furia Umana and The Hollywood Reporter. She was previously Programme Officer at Goethe-Institut Nigeria, and is currently Regional Programme Manager for West/Central Africa at the Johannesburg office of Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council. She has participated in the Fespaco/Africiné Critics’ Workshop; the Berlinale and Durban Talents Press; CICAE’s Arthouse Cinema Management Workshop, and the Southern Africa – Locarno Industry Academy. She has been on film juries at DOK Leipzig, Márgenes Film Festival, Film Africa, and CPH:DOX. She was a guest curator at the 15th Go Short International Film Festival. Aderinsola is also the founder and curator of Screen Out Loud, an independent cinema programme organized in partnership with Alliance Française Lagos.
Ché Scott-Heron Newton (she/her)
Ché is a filmmaker, Assistant Producer and film programmer based in London. For the past five years, she has worked as an assistant producer on socially and politically impactful documentaries in the UK and the US for various production companies. Her interests centre around stories about displaced people and those descended from the transatlantic slave trade. She has worked for Sheffield Docfest since 2024 and before this she was a Young Film Programmer at the Barbican and programmed for Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. She recently directed her first documentary short that will have its World Premiere at SXSW.
Clodagh Chapman (she/her)
Clodagh Chapman is a writer, director and film programmer. She has previously been part of the programming teams for Sheffield DocFest and BFI Future Film Festival, run sold-out events for BFI London Film Festival, BFI Flare and HOME Manchester, and had new film writing commissioned by Open City DocFest. As a writer and director, Clodagh's work has played in competition at BAFTA-qualifying festivals worldwide, and toured to venues across the UK. She is currently developing new work with HOME Manchester and BFI NETWORK, and has previously been selected for talent development schemes with BFI NETWORK, Young Vic, Box of Tricks, and Rope Ladder Fiction. Clodagh has also read for the Bush Theatre, and co-creates new work with young people for the National Theatre and The Lowry.
Deepthi Pendurty (she/her)
Deepthi has recently started her producing journey and is the Associate Producer on films 'Sabar Bonda / Cactus Pears' (Winner, World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at Sundance 2025) and 'Baksho Bondi / Shadowbox' (World Premiere in the Perspectives Section, Berlinale 2025). She was the festival manager for Dharamshala IFF from 2018 until 2022 and oversaw various aspects of the festival including operations, partnerships, programming, submissions process and building the year round programme. Until 2023 Deepthi managed and built programmes that provide training, project accelerators, support and development resources for producers at ProducerLAND in Goa. She also has over 9 years of experience in television programming & production in Hyderabad and Mumbai, and is the co-founder of Hyderabad Children’s Theatre Festival.
Edie Barnabas (they/them)
Edie Barnabas is a Northern filmmaker and programmer passionate about championing queer stories and amplifying Northern heritage. Their work focuses on fostering a more diverse, inclusive, and community-led film industry outside of London.
They currently programme for BIFA-qualifying Bolton International Film Festival, curating the LGBTQ+ selection, and run the film night Slime Presents, which has built a dedicated audience and secured FilmHubNorth funding in 2024 for a series of foreign-language screenings in Leeds. As a programmer, they also produced a UK tour of Helen of Four Gates (Hepworth, 1920), the only surviving silent-era film made in the North, featuring a live score in Leeds, Birkenhead, and Manchester.
Edie’s commitment to local heritage and queer narratives extends into their filmmaking. Their 16mm folk-horror short was screened before Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men at the Alhambra Cinema in Penrith, and they collaborated with Arts Council England and local drag artists to create a short film exploring the queer history of Leeds’ first adult cinema. They are passionate about film culture and history and believe in championing bold and boundary-pushing work, with a focus on amplifying underrepresented voices and reimagining how stories are told on screen.
Fahd Ahmed (he/him)
Fahd Ahmed is an award-winning British-Pakistani editor and producer based in London. His work has been featured by the BBC, BFI, and Hot Docs, and he served as a story editor on the PBS-funded three-part docuseries A Town Called Victoria. Fahd has been an editing fellow at the Gotham Edit Lab, Close-Up Initiative Edit Lab, and the Sundance Story and Edit Lab. He co-produced and edited the feature documentary Q, which premiered at the Tribeca Festival, won the Albert Maysles Award, and was named one of the best documentaries of 2023 by Vogue. Fahd won Best Editor at the Amman International Film Festival and was nominated for both an IDA Award and the Arab Critics Award for Best Editing.
Harry Kalfayan (he/him)
Harry Kalfayan is a programmer, channel manager and editor from London. He has been a part of the programming team at DocFest for the past four years, and has worked at Channel 4 for the past two years on their long-form YouTube distribution strategy, now managing the output on the Channel 4 Documentaries channel. He has organised documentary film programmes at the ICA, Autograph ABP and HKW in Berlin. Previously he worked across post-production, production and film marketing at Al Jazeera, Little Dot Studios and Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Festival. He is on the Board of Trustees at the Independent Cinema Office and was also on the screening committee for True/False Film Festival in 2024.
Imane Lamime (she/her)
Imane is a French-Moroccan curator and producer based between London and Paris with a background in film distribution and programming. She recently worked with the SAFAR Film Festival, the BFI and the Marrakech International Film Festival. She is currently working for Palm Springs ShortFest as an Associate Programmer.
She is the founder of Fhamtini, a London-based film festival celebrating North African cinema. Fhamtini showcases the broad range of the films emerging in the Maghreb region and aims to promote the diversity of the Arab culture and diaspora experience.
She's also a BAFTA member and producer on two documentaries, Shapeshifting by Yamen Mekdad & Juline Hadaya (2024), and Mia Bendrimia's directorial debut Magma (2025).
Julia Yudelman (she/her)
Julia Yudelman is a Canadian writer, curator, and researcher based in Amsterdam. Currently she is an advisor for GoCritic!, a pan-European training programme for emerging film critics and journalists, in addition to providing editorial support for reviews on Cineuropa and Zippy Frames. Previously she worked as Industry Editor and then Senior Editor at IDFA, where she promoted the film and industry programmes, developed publications on creative documentary, read projects for IDFA DocLab, and advocated for disability justice within the festival. She has given talks and moderated panels at the IDFA Industry Programme, IDFA DocLab R&D Summit, LUX Nijmegen, and the Creative Europe Desk’s FestivaLAB in Athens. Actively engaged in the zine and indie publishing community, her writing has appeared in Film Fvckers, Rock Rede, and Subbacultcha, among others. Since 2018, she curates A Woman Is a Cinema, an experimental publication series that seeks to think film and feminism in productive new ways. She holds a Research Master in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam.
Mariana Hristova (she/her)
Mariana Hristova a Bulgarian film critic, cultural journalist and programmer, with a special interest in the cinema of the Balkan countries and Eastern Europe as well as avant-garde, amateur and underrepresented cinema. She is a regular contributor to Cineuropa, Klassiki Journal, Kino Magazine and Filmsociety.bg, holder of the Balkan film website Altcine.com's film critic award, and member of FIPRESCI. She currently lives in Barcelona, Spain where she programs for various festivals and institutions. She also works as an indexer at FIAF - the International Federation of Film Archives.
Martijn te Pas (he/him)
Martijn te Pas studied Psychology, English, and Film & Television Studies at the University of Amsterdam. From 2000 to 2019, he was a Senior Programmer at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). He also served as an advisor for the IDFA Bertha Fund and evaluated projects for the IDFA Forum. Between 2000 and 2020, Martijn traveled to numerous film festivals as a guest or jury member. He was a Documentary Advisor for the Dutch Mediafund (now the NPO Fund) from 2007 to 2013.
In 2019, Martijn moved from Amsterdam to Stockholm, and in 2020, he served as a Guest Documentary Programmer at Nordisk Panorama. From 2021 to 2023, he was a Programmer and Festival Advisor for MIRAGE, a new hybrid/documentary festival in Oslo.
In April 2020, Martijn founded e u R O P E doconsultancy, which is aimed at directors and producers, offering tailored SWOT analyses of films in both development and editing stages. He also provides expert advice on curation, festival strategies, and distribution.
Martijn is an advisor for Eurimages, gives pitch training and worked for SFI Talent to Watch in 2023 and has been a programme advisor for Sheffield DocFest since 2022. He also served as a peer reviewer for the BFI in the UK in 2024 and is an alumnus of EAVE and Sources 2. Occasionally, he writes reviews and interviews filmmakers for Business Doc Europe.
Mathy Selvakumaran (she/her)
Mathy is a creative producer, writer and activist. Working in the intersection of the arts and disability activism, her greatest passion lies in finding and amplifying character-driven narratives of disability and illness, particularly stories told from within the community and from the lens of those lived experiences. She consults for organisations such as Unlimited and The Writers Lab, and has spoken on panels for Slate/Eclipse and the National Paralympic Heritage Trust. As a disability activist, she has been featured on BBC television and radio, in national newspapers and on online platforms such as HuffPost, and has been invited to speak in Parliament with Muscular Dystrophy UK. She also produces youth-led filmmaking programmes in educational settings. In recognition of her dedication to championing diversity in the creative industries, Mathy has been recognised as a Trailblazer of the Future by Campaign Magazine, and is an alumna of the Rare with Google Leadership Academy. Having worked at DocFest in various roles in the Industry and Programming teams since 2017, she is excited to come back to the festival as a Programme Adviser. She consults for organisations such as Unlimited and The Writers Lab, and has spoken on panels for ICO, Slate/Eclipse and the National Paralympic Heritage Trust.
Nikissi Serumaga (she/her)
Nikissi Serumaga is a documentary filmmaker with a background in programming and film festivals. She began as a Guest Services Associate at the Toronto International Film Festival, where her enthusiasm for African films led her to host a Q&A session; write for the festival magazine; interviewe Julie Dash for the 25th anniversary of Daughters of the Dust and be interviewed for the festival podcast. Simultaneously, she curated the Maisha Film Festival in Gulu, Uganda, and later
supported community outreach at Images Festival. When she moved back to Uganda, she programmed multimedia projects for Kampala’s largest public art festival, KLA ART, in 2018. Currently, she's in post-production on her debut documentary, Vintage or Violence and her podcast of the same name was featured in Vogue Business and Dazed Magazines.
Rachel Pronger (she/her)
Rachel Pronger is a writer and curator. She has served as a programme advisor with festivals including Sheffield DocFest, BFI London Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival and Alchemy Film & Arts. As co-founder of archive activist feminist collective Invisible Women, Rachel has co-curated screenings for BFI Southbank, Cinema Rediscovered, HOME Manchester, BalkanCanKino Athens, London Short Film Festival, Glasgow Film Theatre and SiNEMA TRANSTOPIA. Her writing has been published by outlets including Sight & Sound, The Guardian, MUBI Notebook, Art Monthly, Little White Lies and BBC Culture. Originally from Bradford, she is currently based in Berlin.
Tara Brown (they/them)
Tara Brown is a Film Curator and Creative Evaluation Consultant. They describe themselves as a Black fat queer non-binary trans disabled femme. Inspired by the principles of Disability Justice their primary goal is to ensure that cinema is as accessible, diverse and brilliant as possible! Currently they are a Trustee for Reclaim The Frame, an Assistant Programme Advisor for London Film Festival and Programmer for Fringe! Queer Film + Arts Fest and London Indian Film Festival.
From a background working in community events and art education, they have been lucky to work with Bernie Grant Art Centre, Barbican Centre, Lewisham Council, BFI, Wellcome Collection, Fringe Queer Film + Arts Fest, London Indian Film Festival, Home, Whitechapel gallery, the vacuum cleaner and more.
Toni Lee - (they/them)
Toni Lee is a programmer, filmmaker and impact producer based in Leeds. They are part of the organising team at the annual Leeds Queer Film Festival and have previously worked at Journey's Festival International, on a dedicated programme of films made by and with Asylum Seeker and Refugee Filmmakers. Their film work is concerned with the idea of Queer identity and expression, as well as forming a dedicated Film Unit on organising and social liberation in West Yorkshire. Toni works as an Impact Producer at Reclaim the Frame supporting the work of filmmakers from marginalised genders and their fullest expression through meaningful community engagement.
Zeynep Kaserci (she/her)
Zeynep is an artist-researcher and producer with a background in visual anthropology. For the past two years, she has worked as a producer at Close Up, a non-profit NGO dedicated to working with emerging documentary filmmakers from Southwest Asia and North Africa. Recently she participated in the EU funded project ‘Alexandria: (Re)activating Common Urban Imaginaries’ as an artist-in-residence, investigating urban and social processes in Alexandria through its connection to the wider Mediterranean region. The project resulted in a publication that was showcased at MUCEM, Bozar, and Citadellarte. Previously, she conducted fieldwork on the relationality between embodied work and experiences of gender inequality in Turkey, and her short documentary Ocak shot as part of this research was screened at festivals and art galleries such as the RAI, Jean Rouch Film Festival, William Morris Gallery. Currently, she is based in London and works as a cultural programmer.
