The BAFTA Elevate programme is supported by dunhill, with additional support from Banijay UK and Harbottle & Lewis.
Progression in the screen industries is rarely linear. Many professionals build strong credits and experience, but access to networks, visibility and decision-making spaces often shapes who moves into senior creative and leadership roles. As the industry looks more closely at how experienced talent is supported at this critical stage, initiatives like BAFTA Elevate are investing in professionals with proven track records, helping ensure the industry retains and advances the talent it depends on.
Over more than a decade, BAFTA Elevate has supported 83 mid-career professionals across a range of disciplines, taking them through up to two years of bespoke workshops, industry introductions, career guidance and networking opportunities.
Crucially, the focus is on experienced professionals from underrepresented groups, including minority ethnic, disabled and/or low socio-economic backgrounds. BAFTA’s charitable mission is that people from all backgrounds have the opportunity to thrive in the screen industries. At this career stage, frustration about obstacles to long-term goals can be at its most acute and the industry risks losing an experienced, diverse workforce before they reach senior decision-making roles.
In previous iterations, BAFTA Elevate has supported producers, actors, writers and women directors with tools to develop to the next stage of their career. The current 20-strong cohort, who are just over half-way through their two years, are development producers, producers, directors and producer-directors working in documentary and specialist factual. This programme is made possible thanks to the generous support of dunhill.
This is a particularly vital genre in which to strengthen and sustain a diverse range of filmmakers. Many of the best documentaries come from lived experience, access and trust, and the genre as a whole benefits from multiple voices telling stories authentically. Much more than mere representation, these producers and directors can shift narratives, challenge assumptions and expand how audiences see the world. Right now, they’re doing this as creatives and film-makers – tomorrow, perhaps, as industry leaders and goalpost shifting gatekeepers.
Creating the conditions for these experienced voices to progress and lead, and reinforcing the potential for meaningful change, requires dedicated collaboration from across the industry. Supporting the BAFTA Elevate participants throughout are five experienced industry faces: unscripted development executive Harjeet Chhokar, film producer Natasha Dack Ojumu, executive producer Milene Larsson, Channel 4 specialist factual head Shaminder Nahal and MD and creative leader Pat Younge.
Workshops in the first year have spanned areas from pitching to legal and business strategy. Among these were sessions with Younge on interrogating the development process and Misfits Entertainment head of documentary Lizzie Gillet offering practical advice on how to finance independent projects in the current landscape.
Margareta Szabo, the Hungary-born producer of feature doc A Bunch of Amateurs, is one of the current participants.
“BAFTA Elevate invests in my growth, resilience and leadership,” she says. “It’s a long-term investment [for the industry] because underrepresented voices like me, and the other exceptionally talented 19 people, shape how stories are told in this day and age. We bring different perspectives, humour, realities and sensitivities.”
A former actor, Szabo is a self-taught filmmaker who has learned from the bottom up since coming to the UK in 2012. Despite her success to date, she says, “I’ve never had any illusions; I always knew it was difficult, and I’m not relying on BAFTA Elevate to give me a job. But they are putting me in touch with people who might help me along the way. Maybe not now, maybe in, say, three years down the line. They’re putting us on the map.”
Szabo is currently in production on her next feature with director, Kim Hopkins, The Local, supported by Bradford 2025 and Screen Scotland and forming the third part of a trilogy following A Bunch of Amateurs and Still Pushing Pineapples.
“The scheme has reiterated that I’m on the right path for me, which was really important,” she says. “Now I’m going to get in front of people who might help me along the way, whether it’s a festival director, a commissioning editor I’ve never met before, or just some people who advocate for my films. Because they are important stories, I think.”
From the outside, acknowledges fellow participant Nacressa Swan, an observer could look at the many credits under the cohort’s belts and question why this mid-career intervention is needed. But she says this misinterprets what BAFTA sets out to do.
“If you manage to carve out a career in TV, it tends to mean you’re super resourceful, talented and resilient,” Swan observes. “People might look at schemes like this as a charity endeavour for people who face barriers and need some help. But with BAFTA Elevate, it’s not about ‘helping a poor, diverse person’ out – it’s raising our profile. It’s a showcase.”
Burnley-born Swan, who has worked for the likes of Dragonfly, True North and Candour Productions, is a passionate believer in support schemes at all stages of experience. Starting out on the Channel 4 Production Training Scheme, where she had a placement with Darlow Smithson Productions, she’s since undertaken series producer and commissioning mentor schemes.
“None of us are the finished article, and even now, if I email the kind of people who come and talk to us at BAFTA, my email will end up in their junk folder or at the bottom of their list,” Swan says. “BAFTA asks us who we want to have 1:1s with and aims high.”
Through the scheme, Swan is looking for support in improving her work-life balance and taking that next step from series producer to executive producer.
Liverpool-based Scottish filmmaker Dhivya Kate Chetty, whose documentary work spans multiple broadcast and independent projects, was close to throwing in the towel to become a French teacher when she returned to work after parental leave.
“It’s not an industry that favours part-time work or accommodates parenthood that well,” she says. But then the pandemic kicked in and forced her to reassess her options.
“As commissioning has shrunk over the past few years, it has been really awful for freelancers and I have friends who’ve left the industry,” she says. “I’ve had less work too, but I’ve been lucky still to be making documentaries for the broadcasters.”
Nevertheless, she says, it’s easy to feel “a little left behind” and not as visible as she might like, simply by being a freelancer, and by being based outside of London.
“BAFTA Elevate was really attractive because it’s designed to create meaningful introductions with some of the decision-makers and get us in the room,” she says. With regular visits to the capital for the scheme, she appreciates that since participants are bestowed BAFTA membership, she can use the charity’s Piccadilly HQ for meetings and informal lunches when in town.
Because BAFTA Elevate is now well-established, the organisers are drawing from a hugely competitive field of entries. “Even to have been selected for this was quite an achievement, really – it gave all of us a boost just to be here,” Swan says. “I’m not the best at networking and this has done wonders for my confidence, feeling like I belong at these events and that I’ve got a great body of work to promote.”
Chetty admits she’s previously “shied away” from programmes centred on diversity. With several years’ experience now under her belt, she says, “I see it’s massively important that the industry champions alternative voices, because it just makes for better storytelling, better films and a better industry. At this stage in our career, it can be trickier to take the next steps; I think women maybe fall by the wayside more. And if we want to keep women and diverse voices in the industry, then we need this support.”
Above all though, all three point to the benefit of establishing a peer group and shaking off the ‘tunnel vision’ that can plague documentary-making.
“We genuinely elevate each other – it’s not just like a marketing line,” says Szabo. “We are very generous and supportive with each other. Our WhatsApp group is sometimes serious career advice, but sometimes it’s like total nonsense. It’s like therapy, but cheaper – and with better jokes.”
Swan says: “It’s really helped increase my industry awareness in terms of meeting people and having conversations with people I wouldn’t otherwise talk to. People are going on the WhatsApp daily asking for contact or advice.”
Chetty adds: “I’ve met, and become friends with, producers on Blue Planet and award-winning true crime documentary makers. Having that kind of solidarity makes us feel we’re a force to be reckoned with.”
The second year of Elevate marks a strategic shift, alongside group learning there will be a one-to-one focus, says BAFTA co-heads of talent programmes Katie Campbell and Kam Kandola Flynn
“It’s about taking that foundational knowledge and tailoring it to the specific trajectory of each individual and supporting their profile and network within the industry,” they say.
“We are taking a goal-focussed approach to industry meetings, ensuring these talented professionals aren’t just in the room, but are there with a clear purpose to build their networks and accelerate their careers.”
They conclude with a call-to-arms. “Our message to the industry is clear: this is the talent you need to know. We’re calling on producers and commissioners to engage with these creatives, help us raise their profiles, and, most importantly, if they are asked for a meeting with them: take it!”
By Robin Parker
