International Competition

Jennifer Peedom is well known as a writer and director of gripping non-fiction films, including Sherpa, which was nominated for a BAFTA Award for best documentary in 2016 and won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Feature at the London Film Festival. She is now moving into drama with companion piece Tenzing, which is on the Netflix slate of Higher Ground Productions, the company belonging to former US president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. Jen was on Mt Everest in 2014 making Sherpa from the point of view of the Sherpa people when 16 Sherpa guides were killed in an avalanche. The new film is the true story of Tenzing Norgay, the man who first reached the summit of Everest, along with Sir Edmund Hillary. Jen’s other credits include Mountain (ZagrebDox 2018), the precursor to River, Miracle On Everest, Living The End and Solo (ZagrebDox 2009), which played in several major documentary festivals including IDFA and Sheffield and won numerous awards. She has been Managing Director of IF Media, publishers of IF Magazine and producers of the IF Awards was New South Wales Young Businesswoman of the Year in 2003 and was inaugural recipient of the David & Joan Williams Documentary Fellowship in 2010.

David Michôd wrote three shorts that screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 – ‘I Love Sarah Jane’, ‘Spider’ and ‘Crossbow’. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and Victorian College of the Arts School of Film & Television and was editor of Australia’s leading industry/filmmaker magazine, Inside Film (IF).