Awardees announced for the second round of the Miles Ketley Memorial Fund

Bim Ajadi

Bim Ajadi is a London based filmmaker and a 2020 BAFTA Breakthrough Honouree. He has worked in the film & TV industry for over 15 years, beginning his editing career with a Channel 4 disability scheme, then working at a number of post houses. Bim later fulfilled a lifelong dream to become a director and self-shooter. As a collaborative director he is committed to inspire change and champion the under-represented both behind and in front of the camera. 2020 saw the release of Here/Not Here, an acclaimed crossover hip-hop drama short, which was an entrant at the 2021 BAFTA experimental film category. That same year he completed Oh Toni!, a short comedy for BBC Studios starring Alexandra James. Prior to that he was selected to be a part of the 1-year BAME Diverse Directors workshop at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) which involved making his debut mainstream short fiction film The First Time, a coming-of-age drama focusing on a teen relationship over the summer. His other credits include Punk Chef on the road and Up For It (TV entertainment both for BSL Zone) Bim co-directed a documentary series Rising Phoenix: Road to Tokyo 2022,  produced by HTYT/Ventureland, following the lives of 12 elite athletes as they try to make it to Tokyo. It recently featured at the ReelAbilities Film Festival in LA.  Bim more recently directed a new short drama Night Shift produced by Slick Films, that has had numerous nominations and won the Founded Award at the British Short Film Awards.

In 2023 he directed 7 episodes of the long-running Channel 4 drama Hollyoaks,  and performed 2nd unit director on the BBC’s Silent Witness. Bim is profoundly deaf, which gives him a strong visual perspective.

Ella Glendining

Ella Glendining is a BAFTA-nominated Writer/Director. Is There Anybody Out There premiered at Sundance 2023, and has won awards including the Silver Horn for the director of a film on social issues at Krakow Film Festival 2023, the prestigious FIPRESCI International Film Critics Prize, and the Bring the Change award at Biografilm Festival 2023. In 2024 Ella was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer. Ella also secured two 2023 BIFA nominations, Best Debut Director – Documentary Feature, and The Raindance Maverick Award. Ella was one of three recipients of the BFI and Chanel Filmmaker awards 2023, celebrating ‘creative audacity’, and was named a BAFTA Breakthrough 2023. Ella is currently writing a historical drama feature she will also direct for the BFI, called Curiosities of Fools.

Debbie Hannan

Debbie writes and directs for stage and screen – they have been developing and directing new plays for 15 years, alongside their own writing. She is known for dynamic, high energy, heightened work, focussing on lgbtq+, disabled and working-class stories, with a love for dark, social satire. Their theatre work includes co-creating Sound of the Underground with Travis Alabanza which brought cabaret and unions to the Royal Court, directing Faun for Cardboard Citz about youth trans homelessness, and Salty Irina for Paines Plough, about a young lesbian couple confronting fascists. She is currently writing a musical about the Scottish suffragettes and a play about Cambridge Analytica. They recently directed a short film for Film4 and 104 Films, co-written with Matilda Ibini, are writing a short as part of the BFI x Elevate scheme, are under commission at Fable as co-writer of a TV project, and are writing their first feature.

Jessi Gutch

Jessi Gutch is a BIFA nominated writer, award winning director and BAFTA Elevate/BFI Insight producer. Living with incurable ovarian cancer, she proudly identifies as a disabled filmmaker and tells stories that sit between fact and fiction, between dream and reality. Her slate of short films have screened at international festivals such as London Film Festival, BFI Flare, British Shorts Berlin, and Edinburgh, with Until The Tide Creeps In taking home both Best Documentary and Best of Festival at Aesthetica 2022, and Blind as a Beat winning Best Experimental Film at the Women Over 50 Film Festival 2022 and a Semi Finalist prize at Reel Abilities Film Festival in New York. Jessi is currently in post-production on her debut documentary feature Border Town and in development on her debut narrative feature My Cells are Trying to Kill Me.

Sorcha Bacon

Sorcha Bacon is a Screen Daily Screen Star of Tomorrow and BAFTA, BIFA and Grierson nominated producer and founder of Try Hard Films. Spanning documentary and fiction, her shorts have played festivals including Cannes Critics Week, Sundance, SXSW, Sheffield Doc Fest and the BFI London Film Festival. She co-produced feature doc Phantom Parrot which premiered at the 2023 CPH:DOX. Sorcha is currently developing a slate of features including projects with Film4, the BFI, Doc Society and Working Title.

Hannah Tookey

Hannah Tookey is an independent producer working across film, audio, and digital arts to tell stories about urgent social, political and environmental issues. A Churchill Fellow for the arts and social justice, Hannah has spent the last two years developing her skills as an impact producer with a grant from Arts Council England.

In 2020 she founded production company This Little Rock, whose first documentary, Pointe Black, premiered on Nowness, was called “a powerful telling” by The Guardian, won six awards, received a further six nominations, and screened at Oscar and BAFTA qualifying festivals. Other documentary producing credits include ill, actually, which was funded by the BFI and BBC and premiered on BBC4, and BFI and Film London supported Wargames, which was awarded a Vimeo Staff Pick. She was commissioned by Arts Council England and the BBC to create the audio play Two by Two which premiered on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Hannah is a BAFTA Connect Member, a Cause4 and Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy Fellow, and an alumnus of the BFI and Film Hub South East’s Producer Programme, IDFAcademy, BIFA’s Mentoring and Springboard programmes, Media Trust and ITV’s mentoring programme, and The Clore Emerging Leaders course. She’s developing her first feature, sci-fi thriller, Arkadia, which was conceived on Screen Yorkshire’s Flex Development Hub 2022.

Rhea Storr

Rhea Storr explores Black and mixed-race cultural representation with an interest in the in-between, the culturally ineffable, translation, format and aesthetics. Often working in photochemical film, Rhea Storr considers counter-cultural ways of producing moving-image. Selected exhibitions/screenings include: BFI London Film Festival, New York Film Festival, CPH: DOX, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, Museum of African American History and Culture and Somerset House and Lisson Gallery. She is the winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize 2020, the Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize and in 2023 won the Royal Photographic Society Award for Creative contribution to Art in Moving Image.

Yvonne Zhang

Yvonne Zhang is a British-Chinese director and writer based in London. Her short Carrion was recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Production Grant and has screened at festivals worldwide including SFFILM, PÖFF Shorts and Tampere Film Festival, where it was awarded Best Genre Film. Yvonne completed her MFA in Directing from the American Film Institute where she was awarded fellowships from AFI, Fulbright, AAUW and P.E.O. International, and was selected as a BAFTA US Scholar for two years running. She is currently Filmmaker-in-Residence at Somerset House.

Fabia Martin

Fabia’s career began in TV development devising factual films for the BBC, Channel 4, and Vice. Today, she makes films for global brands such as Google, Nike, Samsung, and Unilever with a focus on real stories and great characters with a bright comedic edge.

Her first comedy short, The Rev, was supported by the BFI and premiered at the London Film Festival. It was later screened at prestigious national and international festivals including Manchester Film Festival, Underwire, Cambridge, and Pride Pictures in Germany, and was shortlisted for Best British Short and highly commended at the ‘Oscars’ of the LGBTQ+ short film world, the IRIS Prize. It is now hosted on Channel 4.

Fabia’s debut coming-of-age feature is in early development and she is also developing her first TV sitcom with a London-LA-based production company. At the end of 2023, she was awarded the First Flights x Kodak Film Fund for Six for Gold, a documentary that follows the journey of a Team GB rhythmic gymnast with Down’s Syndrome as she goes for gold at the Special Olympics.

Fabia’s a member of BAFTA Connect, a national talent development scheme, and Free The Work, and through her work, aims to create inclusive and diverse teams to make better, more impactful films.