Photos of our jurors. Row 1 (L-R): Mark Edwards, Kiyoko McCrae, Noa Nwande, Paul Sng Row 2 (L-R): Malikkha Rollins, Derren Lawford, Olaide Sadiq, Joe Hunting Row 3 (L-R): Laura Warner, Brenda Danker, Sam Holland, Andrii Kotliar
We are excited to announce our Jury Members for this year's International Competition, International First Feature Competition, International Short Film Competition and the Tim Hetherington Award, alongside our previously announced members of the Youth Jury.
International Competition Jury
The Jury members for the International Competition are: producer and broadcaster Mark Edwards, Kiyoko McCrae (filmmaker and Program Director at Chicken & Egg Films), and Noa Nwande (Head of International Sales at Watermelon Pictures).
The eight films in the International Competition are up for the Grand Jury Award which honours films that display strong artistic vision and courageous storytelling. This Award is Academy Award® accredited. More information about the films can be found here.
Mark Edwards is a 30-year industry veteran, Producer and Broadcaster who began his career in New York in the 1990s supervising the post-production of a 10-hour documentary series on the history of American cinema. Based in Paris since 1995, he served for four years as Director of the USC Shoah Foundation (founded by Steven Spielberg) in France before working across Europe as an independent producer. In 2012, he joined ARTE France as Head of International Coproductions. In 2021, he was appointed Director of Documentaries in Europe for Netflix. In his role as a broadcaster, he has served as a commissioning editor on more than a hundred documentary films and series. His credits include The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (ARTE/PBS/BBC), Exterminate All the Brutes by Raoul Peck (ARTE/HBO) and The Billionaire, the Butler and the Boyfriend by Baptiste Etchegaray and Maxime Bonnet (Netflix). Since his departure from Netflix in 2024, he has returned to working as an executive producer and media consultant.
Kiyoko McCrae is a filmmaker and Program Director at Chicken & Egg Films, an artist development organization that champions women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers worldwide through funding, mentorship, and industry access. Since 2005, the organization has supported over 550 filmmakers and $15+ million in grants. Previously, she was Director of Documentary Programming and Filmmaker Labs at the New Orleans Film Society. She has served on pitch panels for IDFA, CPH:DOX, Camden, Big Sky, Athena and juries for Cannes Docs, Camden, Nashville, Atlanta, Middlebury New Filmmaker. Recently, she executive produced Hold Me Close (Sundance), Tessitura (Big Sky) and The People Could Fly (Blackstar). She is a 2023 DOC NYC Documentary New Leader and a member of A-Doc and Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
Noa Nwande is Head of International Sales at Watermelon Pictures, where she oversees the international distribution and festival strategy of acclaimed documentary and feature films, including Academy Awards® shortlisted titles. Prior to joining Watermelon Pictures, she worked at STUDIOCANAL across international sales and publicity. She works closely with distributors, broadcasters, and streaming platforms worldwide to develop tailored international sales and festival positioning strategies for a diverse slate of films. Committed to supporting underrepresented voices both in front of and behind the camera, she was selected for Cannes Makers, an initiative of the Marché du Film supported by Creative Europe MEDIA.
International First Feature Competition Jury
The International First Feature Competition jury members are: award-winning filmmaker Paul Sng, Derren Lawford (producer and former trustee of Sheffield DocFest), and Malikkha Rollins (producer and Director of Industry and Education for DOC NYC).
The International First Feature Competition honours the future of non-fiction film, celebrates promising talent and is supported by Netflix. More information about the films can be found here.
Paul Sng is a bi-racial British Chinese filmmaker from London who has lived in Edinburgh, Scotland since 2018. Across documentary and drama, Paul strives to amplify rebellious voices and tell bold and creatively ambitious stories about outsiders that resonate with diverse audiences. He has directed four short films and six feature documentaries, winning numerous awards for POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHE (winner of BIFA 2021 Best Documentary, BIFA 2021 Raindance Discovery Award), TISH (Sheffield DocFest 2023 Opening Gala film) and REALITY IS NOT ENOUGH (Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025 Closing Gala film). In 2022 he was named a BAFTA Breakthrough Artist.
Malikkha Rollins is Director of Industry and Education at DOC NYC, leading the organization's year-round industry and education programming including DOC NYC PRO, one of the field's most substantive 8-day professional development conferences, and a pitch program that connects filmmakers directly with industry decision-makers. She is also the co-founder of DocuMentality, a mental health initiative that creates space for honest conversation about the emotional and psychological realities of life in documentary.
Derren Lawford is an executive producer and creative strategist with a track record of pioneering roles across public service broadcasting, independent production, and global platforms. At the BBC he helped launch 1Xtra, served as Multiplatform Editor on Panorama, and Head of Programming and Scheduling for BBC Global iPlayer. As a commissioner at London Live he oversaw a documentary strand for first-time filmmakers, and has mentored over 30 emerging feature documentary filmmakers through Documentary Campus Masterschool. His feature documentary credits include three Sheffield DocFest premieres, Generation Revolution, Dalton's Dream and MKO, alongside A Bit of a Stranger (Berlinale) and 10s Across the Borders (Busan). He was also part of the team behind The Black Cop, winner of the BAFTA for Best Short Film 2022. In 2022 he founded DARE Pictures, named Broadcast Awards Emerging Indie of the Year 2025.
International Short Film Competition Jury
The International Short Film Competition jury members are: double BAFTA award-winning director Olaide Sadiq (Grenfell: Uncovered, Sheffield DocFest Audience Award winner 2025), Joe Hunting (Creative Director at Painting Clouds), and filmmaker Laura Warner (The Cranes Call, A Last Big Story).
The ten films in the International Short Film Competition are up for the Grand Jury Award which honours the best creative approach to documentary under 40 minutes. This section is Academy Award®, BAFTA and BIFA accredited.
Olaide Sadiq is a documentary director and producer whose work explores human-centred stories, real-life events, social issues and lived experience through emotionally driven storytelling. She directed the acclaimed Netflix feature documentary Grenfell: Uncovered, which premiered at Sheffield DocFest 2025, where it won the Audience Award, and has since received multiple major honours including Broadcast and Royal Television awards, and most recently winning the BAFTA for Single Documentary, with Sadiq also awarded a BAFTA for Emerging Talent: Factual. Her credits include The Final: Attack on Wembley (Netflix), Boybands Forever (BBC) and Louis Theroux Interviews… (BBC).
Joe Hunting is a filmmaker from the UK most known for the feature film WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY (2022), which notably premiered at Sundance Film Festival where it was acquired by HBO. His short films including award winning A WIDER SCREEN (2019) and THE REALITY OF HOPE (2025) have played at festivals worldwide. His innovations with non-fiction filmmaking inside shared VR spaces has been written about in Filmmaker Magazine, TIME and WIRED. He is the founder of virtual production studio Painted Clouds, and co-curator at the Raindance Immersive festival.
Laura Warner is a BAFTA, Emmy, Grierson nominated, RTS winning Director, Producer and Cinematographer who specialises in verite filmmaking. She has spent her career filming in warzones from Ukraine, Iraq and Libya, to civil unrest in Africa, global serious organised crime and international trafficking networks. Her film The Cranes Call premiered at TriBeCa film festival and showed at Sheffield in 2024. Her latest film, an intimate portrait of veteran broadcaster and war correspondent Jon Snow, will premiere at Sheffield DocFest 2026.
Tim Hetherington Award Jury
Jurors for the Tim Hetherington Award are: Brenda Danker (co-founder, Malaysia Freedom Film Network), Sam Holland (founder of Migration Matters Festival, Sheffield), and Andrii Kotliar (Ukrainian producer/filmmaker, #babylon13 collective).
Six documentaries will be considered for the Tim Hetherington Award which recognises a film and filmmaker that best reflects the legacy of photojournalist and filmmaker Tim Hetherington and is presented in association with Dogwoof.
Brenda Danker is a Malaysian educator, producer, and researcher whose work has shaped social impact filmmaking in Malaysia for over two decades. She is the co-founder of the Freedom Film Network, a non-profit organisation that organises FreedomFilmFest, Malaysia's only human rights documentary film festival and the longest-running human rights film festival in Southeast Asia. Her work focuses on socially engaged storytelling, community media, and participatory filmmaking that amplifies marginalised voices and grassroots histories.
Sam Holland is a Sheffield-based arts and theatre producer. He founded the award-winning Migration Matters Festival in 2016, an annual Sheffield-based multi-arts festival celebrating migration, identity and belonging, regarded as the UK's largest Refugee Week festival. Sam is Director of Arts on the Run, a charity championing migrant and refugee artists, and is also Executive Producer for Roots Mbili Theatre, a pioneering theatre company championing narratives from the African diaspora.
Andrii Kotliar is a Ukrainian cinematographer and producer, and a member of the Babylon'13 film collective. He studied cinematography at Kyiv's Ivan Karpenko-Kary National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television. Since joining Babylon'13 in 2014, he has helped document major events in Ukraine, including the Revolution of Dignity and Russia's war against Ukraine. He was both producer and cinematographer of the acclaimed documentary Iron Butterflies, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023. He is also the executive director of the KINOKO Ukrainian Film Festival and a member of the Ukrainian and European Film Academies.
Youth Jury Award
This award is presented by five of the UK's most passionate young documentary lovers to celebrate non-fiction cinema. The Youth Jury, Julianne Gazzingan, Sadie Coll, Jagraj Singh, Clementine Cunningham and Shae Beckford, have curated a selection of six films that will be considered for this year's award.
Previous announcement here.
Audience Award
The Sheffield DocFest audience have the opportunity to cast their vote at cinemas and venues for their favourite films and works, with every feature film in the programme eligible for the Film Audience Award.
Explore the full Sheffield DocFest 2026 programme and make the most of your time at the festival with the tickets and passes we have on offer this year.
Festival Passes are on sale here.
Sheffield DocFest is made possible thanks to the support of our partners, funders and sponsors, including Principal Funders BFI Audience Projects Fund, awarding National Lottery funding, Sheffield City Council and Arts Council England.
