Sheila Hayman

SHEILA HAYMAN has written and directed documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4, ARTE, Beijing TV and others, winning a BAFTA, Time Out Documentary Series of the Year (‘The Big Company’, C4), and a Robert Kennedy award ‘(Finding a Voice’ BBC/PBSNova).

She has been UK Young Journalist of the Year, the BAFTA/Fulbright Fellow in Los Angeles, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper, and is a Director’s Fellow of the MIT Media Lab. In 2020 she was Artist in Residence at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. She also coordinates a creative writing and performance group at UK NGO Freedom from Torture, working to help refugees as her father was helped in the 1930s.

She has made numerous films and digital projects about music in different genres with top orchestras the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with the Barbican Centre, St Johns Smith Square and others. On its release, her BBC film ‘Mendelssohn, The Nazis and Me’ was nominated for the Grierson Arts Documentary of the Year, and is still in demand for festivals around the world. ‘The Other Mendelssohn’ will be its sibling.