About
I am an award winning, BAFTA nominated self-shooting Producer/Director with extensive experience making current affairs and documentary films in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, India, Philippines, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, the UK, the USA and Venezuela for broadcast television, including BBC, Channel 4, Sky and ITV. I am a passionate, versatile and focused filmmaker, driven by the challenge of crafting intimate human dramas that illuminate important contemporary conflicts and controversies that affect us all.
Click on the images on my Home Page to watch video clips from my films.
“…balanced, thoughtful and thought-provoking film.” – The Guardian
“…an engrossing and enlightening film, that didn’t so much seek to convince one way or another as to lay out the arguments clearly, succinctly and sympathetically. In all three aspects it was successful.” – The Daily Telegraph
“The Master Chef of Mogadishu was a brave piece of film-making… beautifully filmed and observed. Where some films show people in the developing world as passive victims, here there was a real sense of agency. The jury all agreed that they would never think of Somalia in the same way as a result of having seen this film.” – One World Channel 4 Television Award Jury 2013
“Unforgettable – an exemplary documentary series.” – The Times
“Striking and gritty.” – The Independent
“Simply the best thing on tv for years.” – The Sun
“An excellent portrait of army life.” – The Guardian
“A death-defying documentary on the Afghan frontline.” – Daily Star
“Compelling, touching and an eye-opener. A lovely unobtrusive study of the relationship between men and their sons.” – Broadcast
“Simple, powerful stuff… heart-rending… enough to make even the most hardened militarist wondering what we hope to achieve in Afghanistan and if it can be worth all this blood and treasure.” – The Daily Telegraph
SELECTED CREDITS
November 2023 – February 2024 Edit Producer – Channel 4
’THE FEAR CLINIC’
Edit producer on this new six part, fixed-rig documentary series in which people with debilitating phobias attend a special clinic in Amsterdam over 48 hours, where they undergo a new, cutting-edge psychological treatment and face their worst fears. The series will get under the skin of Britain’s most debilitating and misunderstood phobias, revealing how they arise and become embedded in our psyche, while attempting to free people from their fears in this eye-opening series full of high drama, shocking challenges and personal transformations.
December 2021 – May 2022 Producer/Director – BBC
‘OUR WORLD, WELCOME TO THE METAVERSE?’
Conceived, produced and directed this mind-bending journey into gaming as the future and fusion of work and play. We follow players from the Philippines and Venezuela who have discovered they can make more money in the economies of online games, such as Axie Infinity, than by working in the analogue world. We explore how the pandemic and economic crisis have helped drive the popularity of such forms of digital work and how gaming is innovating the architecture of the metaverse. Could this be a glimpse of our future?
April – July 2020 Producer/Director – BBC
‘OUR WORLD, BRAZIL: ONE VIRUS, TWO WORLDS’
Conceived, produced and directed this intimate and emotional, and yet highly political film on the relationship between domestic maids and their employers under the pressures of Coronavirus. It explores the devastating impact the lockdown has had on maids as they are either laid off or forced to continue to work, their precarious nature of their work, the polarized debate about Bolsonaro’s policies and the blurring of work and affections that defines the lives of maids in modern Brazil.
May 2016 – December 2016 Producer/Director – BBC2 This World
‘TRANSGENDER KIDS: WHO KNOWS BEST?’
1 x 60-minute critical exploration of the of the polarized debate about transgender children. Spurred by the huge increase in child referrals to gender clinics and the growth of the outlook that the child knows best if they are transgender, the film examines why a Canadian doctor lost his job for disagreeing with this approach. Dr. Kenneth Zucker, for many years one of the world’s authorities on child gender dysphoria, believes that there can be many reasons for a child to reject their natal sex, from psychological trauma to autism, and that children may not know what is best for them. We hear from parents and ex-patients about how his work helped them. We talk to those who disagree, including a transgender activist, doctors and a politician who warns that suicide may result if parents do not accept their children’s desire to transition.
The film interviews trans youth who have happily transitioned but also presents evidence that most young people overcome their gender dysphoria. We hear from those who argue gender is innate and a brain specialist who questions the science behind the idea that a boy could somehow be born with a ‘female brain’ or vice versa. Finally, ‘Lou’, a woman who detransitioned, describes how she is now haunted by her decision to have a double mastectomy, and is angry that doctors did not question why she declared war on her own body.
September 2015 – February 2016 Self-shooting Producer/Director – Fusion USA
‘THE TRAFFICKERS: ORGANS FOR SALE’
1 x 43-minute investigation into the human kidney trade. The film explores how a global scarcity of organs for kidney disease patients and how it drives an illegal market for people in Bangladesh and India who are desperate enough to sell their organs for cash. It begins at the bedside of those who face the moral dilemma of whether to break the law and buy or face an early death, and traces the chain of sellers, recruiters, brokers and lawyers to the doctors in India, who are willing to risk breaking the law to perform illegal transplants with bought kidneys. The film asks whether the illegality of kidney trade is morally defensible in the absence of sufficient kidneys for transplant and the rising death toll of kidney patients.
December 2013 – December 2014 Self-shooting Producer/Director – BBC2
‘THIS WORLD: RWANDA’S UNTOLD STORY’
1 x 60-minute hard-hitting film that weaves a radically new story of the genocide of 1994 and its repercussions for Rwanda, its neighbours and the West. It challenges head-on our understanding of an historic tragedy that shocked the world and redefined international politics for over twenty years. Using new testimony, the film re-evaluates the role of the RPF in the genocide, the war in the DRC, authoritarian government inside Rwanda, and the assassination of dissidents abroad.
2013 Self-shooting Producer/Director – Channel 4
‘DISPATCHES: SOUTH AFRICA’S DIRTY COPS’
1 x 30-minute documentary investigating how waves of protests against the African National Congress government are being brutally and routinely suppressed by South Africa’s police. Uncovering new evidence from the Marikana massacre of 34 miners and police torture cases, it explores fears in South Africa that this brutality is evidence that the ANC government is using the police as a political tool to bolster its waning authority, and has even come to mirror the actions of its apartheid predecessor.
2012 Self-shooting Producer/Director – Channel 4
‘UNREPORTED WORLD: THE MASTER CHEF OF MOGADISHU’
WINNER OF THE ONE WORLD CHANNEL 4 MEDIA WARDS FOR BEST TELEVISION PROGRAMME OF 2013.
1 x 30-minute documentary about Ahmed Jama, a British Somali chef, who has returned to his birthplace to make his own unique contribution to the peace process. He has opened a chain of restaurants that invite Somalis to defy Al-Shabaab death threats and the shadow of 21 years of war to enjoy the simple pleasure of sharing a meal in public. After two bloody suicide attacks on his restaurants kill twenty people, the choice presented to Ahmed Jama and his customers is one that confronts all of Somalia, which today finds itself at the crossroads of peace or a return to war.
2011 Self-shooting Producer/Director – UKTV/BBC
‘THE T.A. AND THE TALIBAN’
1 x 47-minute illuminating and intimate character-driven stories of civilian Territorial Army reservist soldiers serving on the frontline in Afghanistan. Filmed characters in battle and at rest, exploring how these ordinary individuals can turn from being electricians, bouncers, teachers and designers in one moment into fighting soldiers the next, enduring and often embracing appalling shocks and hardships, and the challenges of leaving loved ones at home.
2010 Self-shooting Producer/Director – BBC1
‘REMEMBRANCE WEEK: AFGHANISTAN’
Stories of life on the frontline in Afghanistan for a 5 x 45-minute week-long series marking Remembrance Day. Stories included Soldiering in Helmand, Medical Training with the Afghan National Army and Helicopter Power. At the time the highest ratings for any BBC1 daytime Programme.
2009 Producer/Director – BBC2
‘TOP DOGS: ADVENTURES IN WAR, SEA AND ICE WITH JOHN SIMPSON, RANULPH FIENNES AND ROBIN KNOX-JOHNSTON’ for BBC2’
1 x 60-minute. Britain’s greatest living explorer and record-breaking yachtsman follow John Simpson into Afghanistan’s battlefields to discover and understand the brutal and morally treacherous world of the war reporter. They travel to Tora Bora, meet an array of characters including Taliban suicide bombers, President Karzai, warlords, soldiers and refugees, and test Simpson’s decision-making as he produces live news pieces for the BBC News.
2008 Self-shooting Producer/Director – ITV1
‘DOCTORS AND NURSES AT WAR’
3 x 60-minute. 5 weeks filming battlefield medicine in Afghanistan. Explored trauma surgical unit in Camp Bastion hospital including medical and moral decision making in high pressure scenarios and new techniques. Filmed frontline paramedics as they tended men and women from of 2nd and 3rd Parachute Regiments and Afghan civilians wounded in ambushes, by suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices.
2008 Producer/Director – Sky One
‘ROSS KEMP IN AFGHANISTAN’ BAFTA NOMINATED / BROADCAST AWARDS WINNER FOR BEST FACTUAL SERIES.
5 x 47-minute. Developed, produced and directed 5 highly charged documentaries following Ross Kemp on Britain’s frontline in Helmand Province with Royal Anglian Regiment. At the time the highest rating for a Sky Programme.
2007 Producer/Director – Sky One
2007 BAFTA AWARD WINNING SERIES
‘ROSS KEMP ON GANGS: COLOMBIA’
1 x 46-minute in depth and up close examination of the persistent lethality of paramilitary gangs and their assassin foot soldiers during Colombia’s recent peace process presented by Ross Kemp.
2006 Producer/Director – Sky One
2007 BAFTA AWARD WINNER FOR FACTUAL SERIES
`ROSS KEMP ON GANGS: THE NUMBER IN SOUTH AFRICA
1 x 46-minute documentary on South Africa’s notorious Number prison gangs and the Americans street gang on the Cape Flats presented by Ross Kemp. All character and subject research including gaining unparalleled access to gang leadership inside Pollsmoor maximum-security prison and on the Cape Flats during a period of intense gang warfare.
2006 Producer/Director – Sky One
2007 BAFTA AWARD WINNING FACTUAL SERIES
`ROSS KEMP ON GANGS: BLOODS AND CRIPS IN ST LOUIS’
1 x 46-minute documentary on street gangs in the heart of the USA presented by Ross Kemp. All character and subject research, script development, shoot organisation, and filming for broadcast.