Speakers joining us at CCC 2026

Andrea Arnold is a critically acclaimed writer-director hailing from Dartford, Kent, England. She studied at the American Film Institute Conservatory where she graduated in 1991.

Since 1996 she has directed several award-winning short films including Wasp in 2003, which won her the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2005. Her debut feature film, Red Road, released in 2006 was awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and garnered Arnold the Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer at the 2007 BAFTA Awards.

Her second feature film Fishtank (2009) won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2010 BAFTA Awards as well as the Jury Prize at Cannes. Her other critically acclaimed features include Wuthering Heights (2011) and American Honey (2016). She has also directed episodes of the television shows I Love Dick and Transparent.

Since signing with Park Pictures she has directed the award-winning “Youth Can Do It” spot in 2017 for the youth charity Prince’s Trust.

Asif Kapadia is an Oscar, BAFTA, Grammy, and European Film Award-winning filmmaker best known for his groundbreaking documentaries Senna, Amy, and Diego Maradona. Renowned for revolutionizing the use of archival material, Kapadia’s films blend the emotional power of drama with the truth of nonfiction, creating immersive, cinematic experiences that resonate around the world.

His latest film, 2073 — a bold fusion of archive, fiction, and science-based speculation — premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and became the No. 1 film on HBO Max in April 2025. From global icons to dystopian futures, Kapadia continues to redefine the boundaries of storytelling across film, television, VR, and beyond.

As Chief Executive of Screen Yorkshire, Caroline champions the film, TV and wider screen industries in Yorkshire and the Humber and provides leadership to a talented team of industry experts who deliver skills and talent development, production support and content investment.

Caroline’s 25-year career within the screen industries has evolved from running her first production company with acclaimed music video director Dawn Shadforth to her previous role as Head of Creative at Screen Yorkshire. Along this journey she has spent time as Talent Development Executive for Scottish Film Talent Network, Head of Film at Creative England, Head of Creative Development at Warp X, managed the UK Film Council’s nationwide short film programme through her company Lifesize Pictures and spent a year as Director of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival.

Liverpool-born Jimmy McGovern has a formidable reputation for writing powerful dramas for the stage and screen, often based on real events or social issues. Jimmy’s writing credits read like a list of classic television. Having honed his skills working on Brookside, his major breakthroughs came with Cracker, Hillsborough and Time. Jimmy received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Royal Television Society in March 2018.

Jimmy was one of the founders of Hat Trick Productions in 1986 and since then has seen it grow into one of the country’s leading producers of comedy, drama and entertainment, regularly bringing to the screen distinctive and popular series. In the US Hat Trick launched ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’ in 1997 which ran on ABC for seven years and was the very first British series to be recreated for American network television by a British producer. In 1999 he received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Creative Contribution to Television.

Jimmy is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society and recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool. Before moving to television in 1982, he produced for BBC Radio, where he developed and produced the award-winning Radio Active.

Kevin Sampson is an award-winning screenwriter (ANNE, THE HUNT FOR RAOUL MOAT), film producer (GIANT, AWAYDAYS) and novelist (THE KILLING POOL, STARS ARE STARS) based in Merseyside, UK.

Mobeen has produced and presented across BBC flagship platforms for more than 20 years and is a BAFTA, Grierson, Amnesty International, Broadcast and Royal Television Society award winner.

He has created longform podcast series for BBC Sounds, Spotify and Audible including: Fatwa; Hometown: A Killing; Lives Less Ordinary; The Kanye Story and Catching the Kingpins, which featured on BBC Sounds’ ‘Best of 2024’ list. Mobeen also hosts the BBC World Service strand, Outlook.

Mobeen has produced and presented numerous narrative television documentaries and multi-part series across BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Three including: Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop; Secrets of an ISIS Smartphone; The Battle for Britney: Fans, Cash and a Conservatorship; Hometown: A Killing; A Black and White Killing: The Case That Shook America and The Satanic Verses: 30 Years On, as well as multiple editions of flagship current affairs series Panorama.

In recent years he has also made programmes with BBC Studios, Vice Studios, Expectation, Mentorn and ITN Productions. Mobeen is a regular host on BBC 5Live and the BBC World Service.

Nicola Shindler OBE is a prolific, multi award-winning British television producer, who has worked with some of the most lauded names in television and created some of its most memorable series.  

With over 25 years’ experience in television, Nicola has produced some of the UK’s most successful and award-winning dramas, including Years and Years, Happy Valley, Queer As Folk, Traces, Last Tango In Halifax, Butterfly and most recently Harlan Coben’s The Stranger.  Forthcoming series include Finding Alice and No Return for ITV, Ridley Road for BBC, Traces series 2 for UKTV, Stay Close for Netflix and It’s a Sin for Channel 4/ HBO Max.   

Renowned for her relationships with writers, Nicola has worked with an array of the UK’s most prolific and exciting writing talent including Russell T Davies, Sally Wainwright, Lenny Henry, Paul Abbott, Dan Sefton, Tony Marchant, Amelia Bullmore, Danny Brocklehurst, Matt Greenhalgh and Sarah Solemani, on series starring some of the world’s leading on-screen names.  

In 2019, Nicola was awarded an OBE and took home one of BAFTA’s highest honours, the Special Award, for her services to British Broadcasting. 

Prior to launching Quay Street Productions (part of ITV Studios) in 2021, Nicola founded RED Production Company in 1998, where she was Chief Executive for 22 years, and she also previously served as chief executive and chief creative officer at StudioCanal UK.

Rebecca Hodgson is the Executive Producer of This City is Ours. She joined Left Bank Pictures in September 2023, where her credits as EP also include The Lady for ITV and Britbox and Dear England for BBC1.

Rebecca started her career as a journalist at Screen International. She is an award-winning producer with recent credits including ARCHIE for Etta and ITVX, RTS award winning SHERWOOD for House and BBC1, THE IRREGULARS for Drama Republic and Netflix and DEEP WATER for Kudos and ITV. Earlier credits include VINCENT, WIRED and THE GIRLS WHO CAME TO STAY, STOLEN, WE'LL TAKE MANHATTAN, THE ROAD TO CORONATION STREET, BAFTA winner for Best Single Drama, GOOD COP, RTS winner for Best Drama Series, and FREE REIN for Netflix, which won two Emmys.

Stephen Butchard is an award-winning screenwriter and producer, born in Liverpool. Before writing full time, he trained as an engineer and spent a year in Beijing as a British Government secondee, managing upgrades to the city’s underground rail network.

He began writing for theatre and radio before winning the Dennis Potter Award in 1997 for his first screenplay Soft Sand, Blue Sea. His early TV work includes Little Bird and Lie With Me for Granada.

Stephen has created and written numerous acclaimed dramas, including A&E, Vincent, and the BAFTA-nominated House of Saddam for BBC/HBO. His mini-series Five Daughters won Best Drama at the RTS Awards, with Stephen receiving both the RTS and BAFTA for Best Writer.

His credits also include Good Cop, The Child in Time, The Last Kingdom, Baghdad Central, The Good Mothers (Berlinale Series Award), Shardlake, and This City Is Ours, now in its second series for BBC One.

Los Angeles-based Stuart Ford is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AGC Studios and one of the most experienced and prolific independent film and television producers, financiers and entrepreneurs in the global entertainment industry. UK born and Oxford University educated, Ford is a former entertainment attorney and Miramax Films senior studio executive who in 2007 founded IM Global. Over the following decade, he built IM Global into one of the industry’s leading independent production, financing and international sales platforms with additional talent management and PR businesses across North America, Southeast Asia, India, Latin America and Europe.

In 2018, Ford launched the so-called “super-indie” AGC Studios, an independent content studio with major backing from Silicon Valley, Abu Dhabi and Latin America that develops, finances, produces and sells a diverse slate of feature films and scripted, unscripted and factual television. Since its inception, AGC has been involved in over 50 major productions. Ford’s AGC Television label has quickly become a major player in high-end scripted content, including the recent epic series “Those About to Die,” with a first-season budget of $165 million - one of the largest independently financed TV productions in history.

As a producer and financier Ford has worked with a huge array of leading directors such as Martin Scorsese, Gary Ross, Mel Gibson, Ron Howard, Doug Liman, Neil Burger, James Wan, Scott Derrickson, Roland Emmerich, Tom Ford and Richard Linklater. Across his career, he has produced or executive produced nearly eighty films and television shows and has assembled in excess of $2 billion in independent production financing from North America, India, China, Latin America and the Middle East.

Ford received Variety’s Achievement in International Film Award in 2015 and was named one of The Guardian’s 50 Most Influential People in Global Cinema. In 2023, he was honored at the Cannes Film Festival with Variety’s “Billion Dollar Producer” award. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Television Academy, and BAFTA, and has been profiled in the Variety 500 in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Tony Schumacher had one dream when he was a kid, and that was to be a writer.  Instead of becoming a writer he bombed out of school aged 16 with no qualifications and a sigh of relief.

He worked his way around the world as a roofer, a jeweller, a bouncer, a barman, a binman, and on-board cruise ships selling underpants, before eventually returning to Liverpool to become a response policeman dealing with 999 jobs morning, noon and nights.

Eleven years later, after a breakdown and a period of homelessness, he found himself driving a taxi around the night-time streets of Liverpool. That was when he remembered his dream and finally started to write.

His first three novels were published by HarperCollins in the USA, and since then he has been mentored by Jimmy McGovern as part of the ScreenSkills High End TV Writers Bursary Scheme (2018) and been invited to join the BBC Writersroom Northern Voices Scheme. The Responder series and The Cage are his creations.

Wayne Garvie is President of International Production at Sony Pictures Television (SPT) and oversees SPT’s global network of production companies outside the US, covering Europe, Latin America and Australia. The 16 wholly-owned or joint venture production companies within the business deliver both original and formatted content for local broadcasters in their markets, and create nearly 1,500 hours of entertainment around the world each year. He is also responsible for driving creative development within international production, steering the business to develop locally created properties into global formats and fostering co-developments across the group.

Garvie joined SPT in June 2012 from All3MEDIA, where he was Managing Director, International Production with special responsibility for the company's growth in the US. Previously, Garvie was Managing Director for Content & Production at BBC Worldwide, responsible for establishing the corporation's global network of production companies and overseeing its international formats business.

Prior to that role, he was Head of Entertainment Group for the BBC, where his teams were behind shows like Strictly Come Dancing and Dragons’ Den. Garvie also held senior positions in UK broadcasting, including Director of Broadcasting for Granada.