Mahalia Belo is an English film and television director.
Belo graduated from the National Film and Television School in 2012. [1] Her graduation film, Volume [2] won a BIFA in the Best British Short Film category [3] and was shown at the Sundance Film Festival [4] and the BFI London Film Festival. [5]
She won a 2017 British Academy Television Craft Award in the best breakthrough talent category for her work directing the television drama Ellen. [1]
She directed psychological thriller Requiem and the TV adaption of Andrea Levy's novel about the last days of slavery in Jamaica, The Long Song , both of which were broadcast in 2018. [6] [7] Belo also directed The End We Start From , starring Jodie Comer and Benedict Cumberbatch. [8]
In 2022, Belo participated in the Sight & Sound film polls of that year. It is held every ten years to select the greatest films of all time, by asking contemporary directors to select ten films of their choice. [9]
Belo selections were:
The National Film and Television School (NFTS) is a film, television and games school established in 1971 and based at Beaconsfield Studios in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England. It is featured in the 2021 ranking by The Hollywood Reporter of the top 15 international film schools.
Paul Greengrass is an English film director, film producer, screenwriter and former journalist.
Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch is an English actor. Known for his work on screen and stage, he has received various accolades, including a BAFTA TV Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurence Olivier Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and four Golden Globes. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2015, he was appointed a CBE for services to performing arts and charity.
Sean Harris is an English actor. He played Ian Curtis in 24 Hour Party People (2002), Micheletto Corella in The Borgias (2011–2013), Fifield in Prometheus (2012), Solomon Lane in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) and Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), Philip in Possum (2018), William Gascoigne in The King (2019) and Henry Peter Teague / Peter Morley in The Stranger (2022).
Sarah Gavron is a British film director. She has directed four short films, and three feature films. Her first film was This Little Life (2003), later followed by Brick Lane (2007) and Village at the End of the World (2012). Her film, Suffragette (2015) is based in the London of 1912 and tells the story of the Suffragette movement based on realistic historical events. Her most recent film is Rocks (2020) which she directed in a creative collaboration with the team and young cast.
William Tomomori Fukuda Sharpe is an English actor, writer, and director. After writing for comedy shows and appearing in the medical drama Casualty (2009–2010), he made his feature directorial debut with Black Pond (2011). He gained further acclaim for his Channel 4 comedy-drama Flowers (2016–2018). He then starred in the BBC Two series Defending the Guilty (2018–2019) and Giri/Haji (2019), the latter of which earned him a British Academy Television Award. Sharpe went on to direct the film The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and the Sky Atlantic miniseries Landscapers. He also starred in the second season of The White Lotus (2022), earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
Sophie Irene Hunter is an English theatre director, playwright and former actress and singer. She made her directorial debut in 2007 co-directing the experimental play The Terrific Electric at the Barbican Pit after her theatre company Boileroom was granted the Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award. In addition, she has directed an Off-Off-Broadway revival of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts (2010) at Access Theatre, the performance art titled Lucretia (2011) based on Benjamin Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia at Location One's Abramovic Studio in New York City, and the Phantom Limb Company's 69° South also known as Shackleton Project (2011) which premièred at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre and later toured North America.
Alexander Jonathan Lawther is an English actor, writer, and director. He made his professional acting debut originating the role of John Blakemore in Sir David Hare's South Downs in the West End. He made his feature film debut playing a young Alan Turing in the Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game (2014), for which he received the London Film Critics' Circle Award for "Young British Performer of the Year" and was declared one of BAFTA's 2015 Breakthrough Brits.
Elizabeth Karlsen is an American–British film producer. Her career has spanned over three and a half decades, and In 2019, she was awarded the BAFTA award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. Her work has garnered a total of 52 BAFTA nominations and wins, and 20 Academy Award® nominations and wins. In 2002, she co-founded Number 9 Films with production partner and husband, Stephen Woolley.
Volume is a 2012 short film directed by Mahalia Belo, written by Anna Ingeborg Topsøe, and starring Joe Cole and Anna Brewster. It won the Best British Short film at the 2012 Moët British Independent Film Awards and the Grand Jury Prize for Best Film at San Francisco Shorts 2013. It was also part of the official selection at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival while also appearing at numerous other film festival. Volume was director Mahalia Belo's graduation short at the National Film and Television School (NTFS).
Jodie Comer is an English actress. She began her career in an episode of The Royal Today in 2008. Comer gained recognition for appearing in the series My Mad Fat Diary (2013–2015) and Doctor Foster (2015–2017), and starred in the drama miniseries Thirteen (2016).
Cathy Brady is a Northern-Ireland born film director and screenwriter. After directing several award-winning short films and some television episodes in the 2010s, she wrote and directed her first feature film, Wildfire in 2020.
Aimee Lou Wood is an English actress. After early stage roles in Mary Stuart (2016–2017) and People, Places and Things (2017), Wood made her screen debut on the Netflix series Sex Education (2019–2023), which won her a British Academy Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance from two nominations. She subsequently had roles in the films The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) and Living (2022), and in the stage productions of Uncle Vanya (2020) and Cabaret (2023). In 2024, she starred in the BBC Three series Daddy Issues.
Harry Wootliff is an English film and television director and screenwriter.
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The British Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Producer is an annual award given by the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) to recognize the best British breakthrough producer.
The End We Start From is a 2023 British survival film directed by Mahalia Belo and starring Jodie Comer, with Benedict Cumberbatch, Katherine Waterston and Mark Strong. It is adapted by Alice Birch from the novel of the same name by Megan Hunter.