Meet Our 2026 Guests
We’re delighted to welcome filmmakers, artists, activists and changemakers from Scotland and beyond to LandxSea 2026.
Join them for post-film Q&As, introductions, workshops and conversations exploring the stories, ideas and issues behind this year’s programme.
More guests are still being confirmed, so please check back for updates. As with all live events, guest attendance may be subject to change.
Friday 11 September
James Dawson
Director, Derek vs Derek
James is an award winning director, with accolades including Rose D’or for Secret Millionaire and the Broadcast Press Guild Award for Drag Queen Faking It. James pivoted from making docs for terrestrial TV to features in 2018 with his first documentary Organ Stops: Saving the King of Instruments about a group of eccentric pipe organ enthusiasts saving instruments from closing churches. Screened at film and music festivals across the US and UK, it was bought and shown by the BBC on Christmas Eve 2022.
Saturday 12 September
Marie-Chantal Hamrock
Director, Bone a Cod
Marie-Chantal Hamrock is a visual artist and writer based in Aberdeen, Scotland. She is a PhD candidate at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen. Blurring the line between the real and the imagined, Marie-Chantal’s work explores themes such as gender, social class and peripheral places, to create speculative narratives of past, present and future. Her project Speculative Intersections: Class, Place and Gender in the North-East of Scotland’s Maritime Cultures explores the fishing industry in the North East of Scotland through speculative fiction.
Harry Tomlin
Director, You Told Us To Talk About the Weather
Harry is an award winning, BAFTA-Albert educated director originally from Brighton. His recent projects include short film Heel Drop, in partnership with somesuch, and creative direction for global fashion brand Uooyaa as well as several music videos. Harry’s debut feature, A Fluorescent Sky, found festival success and is now available on Prime Video. Harry has also worked closely with Brighton City Council foster care to produce advocacy content. Harry is a climate-conscious filmmaker who is excited to finally bring his environmental passion to a project with a vital message.
Marcela Lizcano
Impact Producer, Nodo Sur, Materia Prima
Marcela is a producer, audiovisual director, and impact strategist. Founder of Nodo Sur with Tatiana Vila, and founder of Viceversa Cine, a Colombian audiovisual production company specializing in creative documentaries and artistic collaborations. Her creative journey has focused on documentary narratives that explore the relationship with territory, as well as pedagogy. With Viceversa Cine, she produced the documentaries Aislados, A Loss of Something Ever Felt, Suspensión, and the COLLAB VR platform.
Tatiana Vila
Impact Producer, Nodo Sur, Materia Prima
Tatiana is a producer, biologist, and has a Masters in Environment and Development. She is the founder of Latin American social justice and impact organisation Nodo Sur and Endémica Studios production company. Her work has focused on the production of environmental and nature documentaries, television series, and communication strategies for social change. Through these initiatives, she aims to strengthen the social and environmental impact cinema ecosystem in Colombia.
Ben Kempas
Impact Producer, Film & Campaign, Materia Prima
Ben is the founder of Film & Campaign Ltd, specialising in impact campaigns and audience engagement for documentaries. With over a decade of experience, he helps filmmakers drive social change through strategic outreach and innovative virtual events. His work includes Die Kinder der Utopie (mobilising 20,000 visitors across 170 German cinemas), I Am Breathing (global screening day across 50 countries), and The Oil Machine. A former producer at Scottish Documentary Institute, Ben also co-hosted The D-Word, fostering a global network of 20,000 documentary professionals. He now focuses on pioneering digital distribution models.
Iso Attrill
Director, Paradise
Iso Attrill is a filmmaker creating playful, short-form work for clients across TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, etc. including for Netflix, Atmos Magazine, Dr. Martens and Linden Staub, alongside short fiction and documentary films exploring environmental issues and community building. These projects run through SparkBoom Productions, the full-service company they co-run with Colton Kempf. Iso studied at UAL's Camberwell College of Arts and the National Film and Television School under a BFI Scholarship, and now teaches as an Associate Lecturer at UAL's Lime Grove. They're a proud member of Trans+ On-Screen.
Glenda Rome
Director, Expressing the Earth
Glenda Rome is a Scottish filmmaker whose work bridges art, environmental and human connection. For over two decades she's worked internationally on documentaries and community projects - collaborating with Indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian rainforest and Iñupiat people in Alaska, and helping young and underrepresented voices tell their own stories on film. Now based near Edinburgh, her debut feature Expressing the Earth turns her lens inward: a poetic exploration of Scotland's landscapes, geopoetics, and the living relationship between people and place.
Nell Houguez
Co-director, Will the People Possess the Wind
Nell Houguez is a London-based visual artist whose practice is often collaborative. They are beginning to research creative approaches to conflict resolution and are particularly interested in working with others to explore new forms of dialogue, participation and collective expression.
James Marriott
Co-director, Will the People Possess the Wind
James Marriott is an artist, activist and naturalist who works with Platform, an organisation internationally recognised for bringing together campaigners, researchers and artists to tackle injustice and climate breakdown. Platform’s current work focuses on a just transition from North Sea oil and gas towards community-owned renewable energy and food justice.
Lauriem Mompelat
Co-director, Will the People Possess the Wind
Lauriem Mompelat is a sound artist and somatic practitioner from Martinique. Their lyrics work like transformative spells, using the voice to explore and reshape traces of violence held within the body and mind. After eight years developing their practice across London, Paris and Martinique, leading singing circles and independently producing three EPs, they are undertaking a year-long music residency at Tropiques Atrium in Fort-de-France.
Pip Piper
Producer, Jo in the Water
Pip Piper is a producer, executive producer and director specialising in feature documentaries, with 25 years' experience producing and directing award-winning films. He produced two BAFTA-winning documentaries by Michael B. Clifford, Bicycle and Chasing the Sun, and co-produced The Insatiable Moon with Tim Sanders (Lord of the Rings), which won Moondance Festival USA and two NZ National Film Awards. Pip has set up MA programmes in film, led industry bodies, and founded Doc Lab with Exeter Phoenix. He champions grassroots independent filmmaking rooted in sustainability for both filmmakers and the planet.
Jo Bateman
Swimmer, Campaigner and Subject of Jo in the Water
Retired physiotherapist Jo Bateman claimed pollution of the Exmouth sea has led to a “loss of amenity”. “I started swimming in the sea and was absolutely bitten by the bug. The mental health benefits in terms of stress reduction and mood enhancing are huge,” she says. When Jo’s daily swims were being interrupted by sewage spills, alerted to her by the Surfers Against Sewage app she took court action as “the only option”. She is now in legal action against South West Water (SWW) for dumping sewage into the sea near her home - the subject of Jo In The Water.
Daniel Abrahams
Composer, Guitarist and Double Bassist, Finis Terrae
Dan Abrahams is a composer, guitarist and double-bassist embedded in Edinburgh's folk, jazz and contemporary classical scenes. With Scottish folk duo Dowally, he's scored two Scottish archive films and an award-winning Belgian short. In 2024 the Scottish Chamber Orchestra commissioned his piece Hope in the Dark, featuring a percussion instrument made from bicycle wheels — praised by The Scotsman for its captivating blend of blues, jazz and Scottish folk. He's currently part of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's Film Composer Lab, composing for ensembles including Calton Consort and Butter Quartet.
Philippe Boudot
Drummer and Percussionist, Finis Terrae
Born in Normandy and drumming since 15, Philippe Boudot trained in London and at conservatories in Saint-Brieuc and Paris. His playing draws on Afro-Cuban, jazz, rock, funk and Brazilian influences alongside repetitive electroacoustic music, blending acoustic tradition with sampling-driven texture. He's toured with singer Clara Ysé, performed jazz with Brame de Zéphyr, and played with Samba de la Muerte internationally. His UK connection continues through Dowally, with whom he recently performed at Glasgow's Celtic Connections.
Sunday 13 September
Tom Gasek
Co-Director, Ain't No Fish
Tom Gasek is Professor Emeritus at RIT, where he taught in the School of Film and Animation for 19 years, following 26 years as a professional director and animator with credits including Aardman's The Wrong Trousers and Chicken Run, and Laika's Coraline. He ran several studios of his own, including San Francisco's award-winning Sculptoons. A Fulbright Specialist, Gasek wrote the only book on "non-puppet stop motion" for Focal Press and recently completed his third independent film, 4@60 (including ROCKS), using the technique.
Miki Cash
Co-Director, Ain't No Fish
With over twenty years in animation, Michael Cash has freelanced across the US, France, Spain and Denmark, and worked at Aardman Animations, animating on Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, commercials and short films. In 2007 he co-founded illustration and animation studio WÖNKY, where he oversees the animation and design teams and directs the majority of its commercial and broadcast work.
Jeanie Finlay
Director, All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea
Jeanie Finlay is a British documentary filmmaker and artist known for intimate, award-winning work that resonates globally. Her tenth feature, All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea, premiered at CPH:DOX 2026, nominated for the F:ACT Award. She's made films for HBO, BBC (including Storyville), and IFC — among them BIFA-nominated Seahorse, cult favourite Sound It Out, and Emmy-nominated Game of Thrones: The Last Watch. Recent work includes Your Fat Friend (2023). A Chicken & Egg Awardee and Sheffield Docfest Inspiration Award winner, Jeanie founded Glimmer Films and co-founded its distribution arm, Glimmerama.
Adam Sébire
Director, Sikoqqinngisaannassooq
Adam Sébire studied documentary at the national film schools of Australia & Cuba; as an artist-filmmaker his works focus almost exclusively on climate change and theAnthropocene. The day after opening a solo exhibition on Svalbard in March 2020 he found himself marooned in a remote Norwegian lighthouse by Australia’s 18-month Covid border closures; to the present day he remains one of the Arctic’s 4 million human inhabitants.
Maria Galliani Dyrvik
Director, Hope Is a Word
Maria Galliani Dyrvik grew up between the Norwegian fjords and the Italian Alps, and has worked across Norway, Italy and the UK. She's written and directed animations and short documentaries screened at festivals including Interfilm Berlin and Nordisk Panorama, alongside collaborative projects from audio installations to documentaries — among them Modus Vivendi (2025), on Yugoslav survivors of SS labour camps in Northern Norway, and web-doc series Vi e Brann, nominated for the 2023 Norwegian media prize. Hope Is a Word is her first documentary feature.
Anita Vedå
Producer, Hope Is a Word
Anita Vedå co-founded Smau in 2014 and works as a creative producer for documentaries. Her films have been well received in Norway, and her recent co-production Murmuring Hearts (2024) won Best Cinematography at Tallinn Black Nights. She attended IDFA Academy (2019), was part of the Norwegian delegation to CPH:DOX (2024), and joined the “Take on Impact” program at Movies that Matter in 2025.
Eilidh Munro
Director, The Herring Queen
Eilidh Munro is a Scottish, BAFTA-winning self-shooting documentary director specialising in observational films about how people and nature interact. Her work has screened at festivals and broadcast internationally, and has been used to influence policy and decision-making in the UK and beyond. Based in Scotland, she works freelance as a director, camera operator and editor, with a particular interest in environmental and social justice stories - alongside broadcast, brand and charity clients. She holds a distinction from Edinburgh College of Art's MA in documentary directing.
Meet the Jury
Our annual juried North Light Award shines a light on bold Scottish filmmaking that reimagines our relationship with the natural world. With a £500 cash prize, it honours originality, impact, and creative vision in environmental storytelling. Finalists screen throughout the weekend, with the winner announced at Closing Night.
We are honoured to introduce the jury selecting this year’s North Light Award winner.
Amanda Thomson
Artist and author
Amanda Thomson is a Scottish artist and writer whose work spans creative non-fiction, printmaking, photography and video. Her practice explores place, belonging and how we come to understand the natural world through art and language. She holds a PhD in interdisciplinary arts from the University of the Highlands and Islands, with research focused on Scottish forests and place-based practice. Her books include A Scots Dictionary of Nature and Belonging: Natural Histories of Place, Identity and Home, shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. She also contributes to The Guardian’s Country Diary and was Artist-in-Residence with Cairngorms Connect.
Till Dietsche
Director, CINEMARE International Ocean Film Festival, Kiel, Germany
Till Dietsche is the founder of CINEMARE International Ocean Film Festival Kiel, which celebrated its tenth edition in 2026. Inspired by his experience as a diving instructor and witnessing the impact of human activity beneath the surface, he created the festival to bring the ocean onto land and into cinemas. CINEMARE combines film, science communication and conservation, bringing together researchers, NGOs, policymakers and the blue economy. Till previously founded Taiwan’s 39 Hour Short Film Contestival and has taught documentary ethics and practical filmmaking in Taiwan and Germany. He holds a PhD in Chinese Studies and serves on the board of the international Green Film Network.
Additional jurors to be announced.
The North Light Award 2026 will be presented at the start of the closing night screening, Sunday 13 September, 7.30pm.
More guests to be announced. Please sign-up for our newsletter and follow @LandxSeaFest on social channels for all the latest news and updates.