Laverne Caprice

Festival Marketing Manager

Laverne is the Marketing Manager at Open City Documentary Festival. She has worked on various UK film campaigns as well as film festivals such as Rianne Pictures’ Women X. She is also a writer, presenter and podcast host mainly focused on film and culture.

Lucy Wardley

Festival Producer

Lucy is the Festival Producer and Expanded Realities Programmer at Open City Documentary Festival. She has worked with the festival in a variety of capacities including on the guest and programming teams and holds an MA in Documentary Practice from Queen Mary University of London.

María Palacios Cruz

Festival Director

María Palacios Cruz is a film curator, writer and educator. Before joining Open City Documentary Festival, she led the Film Curating course at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola in San Sebastian (Spain). María has worked for many years as an independent curator for film festivals and cultural institutions worldwide. She has been a programmer for the Courtisane Festival since 2008 and was its Director between 2010 and 2012. She was Deputy Director of LUX, the UK agency for artists’ moving image, from 2015 to 2020.

Siavash Minoukadeh

Programme & Marketing Coordinator / Associate Programmer

Siavash is the festival’s Programme & Marketing Coordinator and Expanded Realities Programmer. He has previously worked at Watershed, Bristol and worked on festivals including BFI Flare and London Film Festival. They are also a curator and writer, working mainly with moving image.

Oliver Wright

Director of Programming

Oliver is responsible for the festival’s film programme, as well as our year-round screening events. He has been involved with the festival since its inception and has been programmer since 2015.

Elizabeth Dexter

Associate Programmer

Elizabeth Dexter makes books, subtitles, translations, and works closely with filmmakers in production. She is the technical manager and projectionist for the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival as well as the coordinator of a Galician lab for independent and artists’ cinema. She has worked with the BFI, Auguste Orts, Dokufest, the MoMA Department of Film and several co-op and independent cinema spaces in Europe, most recently Close-Up and Kino Armata. She is a current participant of the 2023 Baltic Analog Lab School.

Abiba Coulibaly

Associate Programmer

Abiba Coulibaly is an assistant programmer at the BFI with a background in critical geography, interested in the intersection of ethics and aesthetics. She runs Brixton Community Cinema and launched Magnum Photos’ first UK film festival, and has recently curated screenings for the Barbican following participation in their Emerging Curators Lab, and Autograph ABP as part of Opensources.

Marta Calderón

Associate Programmer

Emily Mason

Associate Programmer

Emily Mason is a film programmer based in London. She holds an MA in Film Studies, Programming and Curation from the National Film and Television School. Since graduating, Emilyhas worked for Edinburgh International Film Festival and London Film Festival, as well as previous editions of Open City as Guest Coordinator.

Jesse Cumming

Programme Advisor

Jesse Cumming is a Programmer with Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival as well as a consultant with Berlinale Forum and Open City Documentary Festival. He previously served as a Programming Associate with the Toronto International Film Festival. His writing has appeared in Cinema Scope, Canadian Art, The Brooklyn Rail, MUBI Notebook, C Magazine, Hyperallergic, Another Gaze, and more. He is currently a Media Lecturer with Ryerson University’s Cairo Campus.