Franziska Wagenfeld is the Executive Producer of GRIT. She’s been Wide Angle Tasmania’s Executive Director since early 2022. Franziska is an experienced film professional with a strong passion for championing bold voices and contemporary ideas. Her former roles have included Investment Executive at screen agencies, screen lecturer at several universities, and independent producer of feature films, award winning documentaries and short films.
Rebecca Thomson is a filmmaker based in nipaluna/Hobart who loves storytelling and connecting with people through a variety of formats and genres but usually with humour and a twist. Rebecca has directed and produced award winning short documentaries, web series, horror films, activist films and music videos.
Jillian Mundy is a pakana woman from Nipaluna (Hobart), Lutruwita (Tasmania). She is a freelance writer, photographer, consultant and emerging filmmaker. She has been published by the Koori Mail National Indigenous newspaper since 2005 and her work has taken her around Australia.
Tom is a Launceston based Director-Cinematographer, and an avid discoverer of stories, curious solver of problems and endless chaser of natural light. With 15 years in the industry, he discovered his life’s calling creating engaging visual content that captures wonderful human moments and stories.
Vivien Mason is a Tasmanian animator and filmmaker with a passion for handmade puppets and characters. Her animations have been exhibited around the world at major festivals. Vivien is a graduate of the Tasmanian School of Art (2010) and the Royal College of Art (2019). She is experienced in film and television, including productions for the ABC (Australia), Foxtel, Al Jazeera, Blue Rocket Productions and renowned animation studio Animal Logic.
Matthew Newton is a Director/Cinematographer and Photographer based in Hobart, Tasmania. He has shot documentaries that have been broadcast nationally as well as feature documentaries for festival release. His photographic work is regularly chosen amongst the countries best and exhibited in the nation’s premier photographic art prizes.
Troy Melville is a Tasmanian producer and director of several television broadcast projects. Troy also produces art films and has collaborated with a number of indigenous artists. Troy has produced short factual films that have screened at film festivals and on the ABC.
Lara is an award-winning filmmaker who specialises in documentary through her production company Small World Documentaries. Early in her 26 year career she was told to multiskill, and as a result she is just as happy producing, directing, production managing, shooting and editing. She has worked as a content creator for the ABC, National Geographic, MBC in Dubai and the creative agency BDA in London. She edited the Walkley finalist documentary feature Mary Meets Mohammad and recently worked on Christmas Island with Plimsoll Productions shooting and producing behind-the-scenes for their latest blue-chip natural history series. She has made over 70 short films and was also the co-producer / filmmaker of the multi-award winning Tasmanian web-series Women of the Island.
Co-Artistic Director of Archipelago Productions | Actor | Director. Ben has steered a number of new productions for Sydney Theatre Company, where he was Resident Director for three years including Morph, These People, This little Piggy, Metamorphosis and Thyestes. He co-directed Victory for STC, ran numerous play readings and developments and judged for the Patrick White Award and Young Writers Award. Other productions include Saved (NIDA), Insect!, Pantagleize, and Monkey (UNSW), Macbeth, King Lear, The Tempest (STC) and Monkey (Big Monkey), The Gardens of Paradise (Ten Days on the Island), Silver (Downstairs Belvoir), The Bluebird (Cranbrook School), Gruesome Playground Injuries (Tas Theatre Co), 12 Times He Spoke (Blue Cow), and Perfect Stranger and Rough for Theatre (UTAS). As Associate Artist for Griffin Theatre he was Associate Director on Gloria, directed Feather in the Web, and ran the artist development programs for three years. For Archipelago Productions he conceived of and directed Venus and Adonis, The Masque of the Red Death (a co-pro with MONA FOMA), The Bleeding Tree, Winterreise, The Maids, and Past the Shallows (a co-pro with ATYP), as well as translating and directing Schubert’s Winterreise as a hybrid music/film project, and adapting /directing Favel Parrett’s novel Past the Shallows as an experimental feature length film.
Bree Sanders is an emerging filmmaker based in Southern lutruwita/Tasmania. In 2022 she created the BTS film for “The Giants” and completed a Grit internship with Wide Angle Tasmania which led to her first short film commission through the same program. After over a decade of creating films for private and commercial clients, her focus has turned to more community minded projects and documentary making.
Elli Iliades is a writer and director based in lutruwita/Tasmania. Elli has written and directed several short films including WAITING FOR ANGEL and THEODORE’S GIFT, which have screened at more than 40 film festivals worldwide including Sydney Indie Film Festival where her short film, THEODORE’S GIFT, received the Audience Award for Best Thriller. In 2022, Elli wrote and directed the short drama, SO MUCH SMOKE, adapted from the short story by Félix Calvino, funded by Arts Tasmania and Creative Hobart. Elli is currently developing several screen stories, including the feature film, VALLEY OF ORCHARDS, produced by Jacaranda Dreams Productions, and a drama, which was selected for the Australian Director’s Guild Program at Screen Forever.
Lucienta Reid is a Tasmanian writer, filmmaker and photographer. Born in remote northern Tasmania, Lucienta grew up between the Tasmanian wilderness and surrounding rural towns. She has since worked as a photographer and filmmaker in Australia and Europe, including several years in Spain doing production, camera crew and lighting assistant roles for international fashion and advertising clients and working on several feature films. Lucienta was awarded a grant from the government in Palma Mallorca to exhibit ‘La Feria’, a reportage series shot over two years following a travelling carnival. She later returned to Tasmania to pursue her own work as an artist, where she performed poetry twice at the Sydney Opera House. She has since worked with numerous Tasmanian, mainland and international clients producing projects.
Dylan Hesp is a Tasmanian comedian, writer and filmmaker who brings the loveable losers of our world to life on the stage and screen. Most known for his breakout role in Sando on ABC TV and for co-creating and starring in the smash hit YouTube series Australia’s Best Street Racer. Dylan has also performed as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival’s prestigious Raw Comedy broadcast, fronted commercials for ABC TV and VISA and starred in series Rosehaven, The Gloaming and At Home Alone Together.