BFI NETWORK Outline 2024 - Participants

Benjamin Annang is a Filmmaker / Director based in Bletchley, Milton Keynes. After starting off as a videographer and photographer, Benjamin decided to take their career to the next level through their directorial debut Loyalty. Utilising their experience behind the camera to focus their ambition on directing.

Benjamin’s wishes to create stories that makes the audience ask questions and reflect on their own lives. They are currently working on their next short film, Think Twice. A social impact film to bring awareness of knife crime and youth violence in London which is currently in pre-production and will be shot in January 2025.

Chaa Ustaoglu is a writer-director and co-founder of Campdale Motion, an independent filmmakers’ collective. Two of his first three films have garnered festival awards and recognition, whilst he nears the final stages of post-production for his third short. Chaa harbours a passion for thrillers, particularly those that confront characters with difficult moral dilemmas. He is striving to integrate his academic background as a historian from University College London with his unique position as a Turkish-British filmmaker. Currently, he is writing his next short, as well as a feature film.

Hamza is a writer/director based in Bedfordshire, interested in unique and unconventional narrative structures. He is particularly interested in storytelling that utilizes sound design to convey themes and ideas. His main inspirations are David Lynch, Edward Yang and Don Hertzfeldt.

Jamie Perault is an award-winning director based in Watford with French and Nigerian roots. An alumnus of the National Film & Television School, his graduate documentary Budd, Sweat & Tearz premiered at Tribeca Festival 2024 and received a special mention from the jury.

Ever since he picked up a camera at 16 to film a hilariously flawed gangster film starring his teenage friends in ill-fitting suits, he has relentlessly pursued his ambition of directing. With a creative focus on stories that explore race, nationality, and subcultures, Jamie remains committed to bringing often overlooked perspectives to the screen, striving to tell stories that resonate with those who feel like outsiders.

Jemma Williams-Fyne is an emerging writer and director based in Chichester. After reading Film Studies at Kings College London, Jemma now works in marketing for a UK cinema and recently completed a certificate in Filmmaking at the National Film & Television School. She is currently working towards her first short which she hopes to shoot later this year. Throughout this Outline programme, Jemma will develop a short comedy-drama script about the bonds of friendship.

After completing a range of filmmaking courses including a BA in film and TV, Jocelyn has worked in various film roles including as a production coordinator and as a production manager on short films and a feature film. Jocelyn has moved into film production, working on a range of projects and advising on others whilst developing her own scripts. Using her extensive transferable skills, Jocelyn produces and curates events via her company,  Through A Different Lens, screening films and connecting creatives whilst working in outreach and engagement for a film production company.

Michelle Brooks is a BBC trained Writer/ Director who started her career as an actress at Rose Bruford Drama School in Kent before retraining and working for the BBC in Salford and London. Over fifteen years Michelle crafted short form content for the BBC, UKTV, National Trust, The Media Trust and Twitter UK as well as having several shows commissioned for Sky. More recently, Michelle has focused on developing her writing and her comedy voice and her sitcom SAFE was shortlisted for the Hat-trick Television and Comedy 50:50 Tellhervision Competition.  As well as performing a one woman show for the LOL Lab at the Imperial College Michelle performed her play BAMESTATION at the Comedy Museum for the Camden Fringe. In 2023, Michelle was a cohort on the Wonder Women programme and she has just completed Line Producing on her first feature CHASING HOME for Bolt Productions. Michelle is really looking forward to developing her own short film with the BFI support and is planning on using this short as a proof of concept for her feature film set in Brighton where she is based.

Nash Colundalur is a Journalist, Screenwriter and Playwright. He won the Guardian International Development Journalism Award for reporting on climate change-related skirmishes in Kenya. He was a finalist for the BBC Writersroom scheme, and his pilot script on child soldiers got him a place in the BBC London Voices program. His BBC 3 Radio play D is for Dwelling staring Pippa Haywood was shortlisted for the Audio Drama Awards. His play on the partition of India staged at the Omnibus, London, won the Hammond House Best Play Award. His children’s books have been twice shortlisted for the Faber Fab Prize. He was part of the University of East Anglia workshop and is currently finishing a novel, excerpts of which have been longlisted for the Book Edit prize and secured the Limnisa Writing Residency in Greece.   Based on his journalism, he is currently working on TV series about the Sri Lankan civil war and a British Bangladeshi woman taking on the Italian mafia.

Shawn Shaoxuan Zou is a Chinese writer-director. He also works professionally as a script supervisor for film&tv, and as a visual researcher for treatments.

He graduated in MA from London Film School in 2022. He also holds a BA with First Honours in Film and Media Art at Hong Kong Baptist University.

He naturally inclines to stories that deal with family, or the lack of it. Literature is a great source of inspiration for him. In his works, he also pays tribute to film directors such as Yasujiro Ozu, Hirokazu Koreeda and Abbas Kiarostami.

Zara Alleyne is an actor and writer from Luton who draws inspiration from her experiences, daydreams, pet peeves, and a commitment to addressing aspects of storytelling that she wants to change. She is fresh out of a writers group with Talawa theatre where she worked on a short play about the pain and beauty of making and maintaining female friendships in your early 20s. She hopes that through her writing, people who often feel overlooked finally feel seen, and if this isn’t the case, Zara hopes that these people feel inspired to create their own stories that make them feel represented.

Cassandra Johnson-Bekoe is a writer, script editor and producer based in South West London. After working as a bouncer to fund her Screenwriting certificate from the Met Film School, Cassandra’s way into the industry was through the Mama Youth Project in 2016. Over the years she has worked in scripted development for some of the leading production companies. Her production credits include Ted Lasso S2, Riches, Secret Invasion for Marvel Studios and The Chemistry of Death.

Cassandra has co-founded two collectives. The first, ‘The Colab’, was founded in 2018 as a diverse network for industry professionals; it currently has over 250 members. The second, ‘Black Women in Scripted’, was founded in 2020, and currently boasts over 300 members – a mix of established and award-winning writers, producers, and execs, as well as new industry talent. The collective has successfully partnered with Casarotto as well as Curtis Brown in the past to aid new writers gaining representation. In 2022, BBC Studios hosted the first Black Women In Scripted event which further boasted the profile of the collective.

This is Cassandra’s second year running our script writers development programme.