I’m a freelance documentary filmmaker, and live in the UK with my wife (the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey) and our young son. I’ve won over a dozen awards for my work in areas of conflict, including an Emmy, two BAFTAs, an RTS, a Grierson and the Foreign Press Association award for Journalist of the Year.
I studied English Literature and briefly worked in the theatre before getting my first job as a runner at a small documentary production company in London. I then worked my way up as a researcher and Assistant Producer on documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 before being commissioned to make my own film for Channel’s 4 strand for new directors. The resulting film, Four Weeks to Find a Girlfriend was a gruesomely personal journey into the horrors of modern dating, and was shortlisted for a BAFTA (Best New Director, Factual) and nominated for a Grierson Award (Best Newcomer).
Since then, I've made almost 50 films for the BBC, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Channel 4 and Sky. My latest series, Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke (Hulu / Disney+) immediately became Hulu’s highest rating docuseries ever. It featured exclusive, in-depth interviews with members of the Franke family, combined with unique access to their entire archive of over 1,000 hours of footage. Prior to that, my series Aftershock for Netflix combined graphic archive with compelling interviews from three very different groups of people who were caught up in Nepal’s devastating earthquake of 2015.
Before working with international streamers, I’d made a raft of critically acclaimed and award-winning films for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK. One Day in Gaza (BBC) was a detailed exploration of the events of May 14th 2018, when a mass demonstration by Palestinians against the moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem resulted in over 60 Gazans being killed and almost 3,000 being injured by the Israel Defence Forces in a single day. It was nominated for a Grierson Award for Best Current Affairs documentary, and won the Broadcast Award for Best Current Affairs Documentary. Syria: Across The Lines (C4 / PBS Frontline) documented life on both sides of a sectarian frontline in rural Syria, witnessing how a once-peaceful community was breaking apart along ethnic and religious lines in the country’s nascent civil war. The resulting film (which I also shot) won ten prestigious awards, including a clean sweep of an Emmy, a BAFTA, an RTS and a Grierson, and also provided footage for the viral, online film The Bombing of al-Bara, which was also nominated for an Emmy. I was also nominated for a BAFTA for my camerawork.
Other single films include four documentaries for Channel 4’s flagship series Cutting Edge (including Confessions of a Traffic Warden and A Very British Storm Junkie); Abused: The Untold Story (BBC), a landmark, feature-length film about the personal and national reckoning that took place in the UK in the aftermath of the Savile revelations; The Teaboy of Gaza (BBC), a compelling portrait of a young tea seller plying his trade on the factional backstreets of Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ election victory; and Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict (Sky). I also co-directed Rory Stewart's BAFTA-winning two part series on the history of foreign interventions in Afghanistan.
My most recent work in an area of conflict was Ukraine: The People’s Fight for the BBC (2023), a self-shot film following a small group of volunteer special forces soldiers on the frontline in the early months of the Ukraine war.
The film My Child The Rioter set the tone for a series of intimate, “testimonial” films that used intimate, forensic interviews to get insight into complex and layered issues within relationships. For this I interviewed young people who were involved in the British riots of 2011 alongside their parents, and it was followed up with Mum and Dad are Splitting Up, a critically acclaimed film for which I interviewed children in the presence of their separated parents. This film is used as a teaching tool for Relate counsellors.
In 2014 I collaborated with BBC Newsnight, working with editor Ian Katz to develop a greater documentary sensibility in producers and journalists, while also filming and directing short, fast turnaround documentaries of my own about current news stories. Films include a week behind the scenes at the Trump White House briefing room, the human impact of the Somerset floods, and an account of life on the front line between Russia and Ukraine in the wake of the invasion of Crimea. All these films and more can be seen here.
I've won a number of international awards, including the Foreign Press Association award for "Journalist of the Year". I’ve been nominated for a BAFTA for my camerawork, and have been awarded the Peter McGhee Fellowship, which honours a filmmaker “whose work reflects excellence, intelligence, fairness and scholarship”. My films often focus on ordinary people in extraordinary situations, and I have a reputation for bringing intimacy, humour and clarity to tough, complex subjects.