Leading UK documentary event Sheffield DocFest (June 23-28) announced January 6 several new appointments to its senior leadership team, including IDFA senior programmer Raul Niño Zambrano, who joins Sheffield as head of film programmes. He will start at the end of January.
Other new appointments to the Sheffield senior leadership team are immersive director Francesca Panetta, who takes over as alternate realities curator, and Sarah Mosses and John-Paul Pierrot of Together Films (UK) who will head up the festival’s marketing and audience strategy and campaign in 2022.
Clare Stewart, the festival’s interim CEO, said: “We are thrilled to be welcoming such impressive industry leaders to the Sheffield DocFest team. While the landscape for festivals remains in flux, together with the existing team, we will forge a bright future for Sheffield DocFest and for the industry colleagues, audiences, partners and community who continue to be so invested in that future.”
Added Zambrano: “Sheffield DocFest plays such a vital role in the international documentary arena as well as for the British industry… I am excited to make a contribution to UK cultural life at a time when its film and TV industries are taking such positive steps to be more inclusive and accessible.”
Francesca Panetta commented: “I’m absolutely delighted to be joining Sheffield DocFest, a festival that has long been a beacon for documentary making that pushes form and takes risks. I’m honoured to be curating Alternate Realities as the immersive industry enters a new phase – one in which audiences of all demographics are now familiar with virtual worlds, and artists and media makers are adopting and bending technologies at a furious rate.”
IDFA posted online January 6 of Zambrano how, “in his tenure at IDFA, Raul helped launch the careers of countless filmmakers and brought renewed attention to the documentary masters of our time, many of them lesser known within the Netherlands. With his profound expertise on Latin American cinema and LGBTQIA+ documentary films, his keen eye for emerging documentary talent, and his remarkable ability to make lasting personal connections with filmmakers, professionals, and audiences, Raul played a core role in IDFA and the international documentary community surrounding it.”
IDFA continues: “Raul has also been a friend to many IDFA colleagues over the years thanks to his warmth, compassion, and infectious sense of humour, which will be dearly missed. We are confident he will do great things at Sheffield DocFest, and we congratulate him on this exciting new step in his career.”
Francesca Panetta is an Emmy award-winning immersive director and industry leader in the world of experimental storytelling. She has pioneered new forms of documentary and journalism leading teams in newsrooms and universities harnessing emerging technologies for social impact. She was a Creative Director at MIT where she made flagship AI work such as In Event of Moon Disaster. Before that she worked at the Guardian for over a decade pioneering new forms of journalism, including setting up and running the in-house virtual reality studio. Her works have won critical acclaim – receiving numerous international awards. She was a 2019 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
Together Films (Sarah Mosses and John-Paul Pierrot) is a marketing, distribution, and technology company based in London & NYC serving the international film community. Sarah Mosses (Founder & CEO) is a leading expert on the areas of film marketing and distribution, host of the Digital Perspectives webinar series that helped 3500+ industry colleagues to pivot to virtual during the lockdown, and an advisor to various festivals including DOC NYC, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and the Athena Film Festival.
John-Paul Pierrot (Together Films’ Head of Digital Marketing & Partnerships) was previously Digital Marketing Manager at Picturehouse Cinemas and has 9 years of experience, curating award-winning marketing campaigns, overseeing the online communities of 26 cinema venues, and managing the Picturehouse digital brand, winning the best Marketing Campaign at the Screen Awards in 2018.
As announced previously in Business Doc Europe, acclaimed UK doccer Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna) will be Sheffield DocFest’s guest curator for the 2022 edition.
