RICHARD POPLAK is an award-winning author, journalist, and filmmaker. He has become one of the most widely read and controversial political journalists in South Africa, editing at large for Daily Maverick. Poplak has reported from over 25 developing countries, for many of the world’s prominent titles. In 2019 he was part of a team that won the prestigious Global Shining Light award for investigative journalism. He is a former Rockefeller Fellow and has published five books: Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-era South Africa, The Sheikh’s Batmobile: in Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World, Kenk: A Graphic Portrait, an anthology of his Daily Maverick election coverage, Until Julius Comes: Adventures in the Political Jungle and Continental Shift: A Journey Through Africa’s Changing Fortunes.

DIANA NEILLE is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker from Johannesburg, South Africa, and the co-writer and director of Influence. An alumna of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Diana has spent the last few years building new media and documentary film and television start-ups. Her projects focus on global political and corporate corruption, organised crime and illicit financial flows.

For almost 20 years, Montreal’s award-winning EYESTEELFILM has made an international impact with social issue documentaries such as Softie (2020), Influence (2020), Dope is Death (2020), The Internet of Everything (2020), Anote’s Ark (2018), Let There be Light (2017), I am the Blues (2015), Deprogrammed (2015), Chameleon (2014), Forest of the Dancing Spirits (2013), Inside Lara Roxx (2011), Rip! A Remix Manifesto (2009), as well as a series of films chronicling modern life in China: Bone (2005), Chairman George (2006), Up the Yangtze (2007), Last Train Home (2009), Vanishing Spring Light (2011) and China Heavyweight, (2012). In the process, it has been the recipient of over 100 international awards.

STORYSCOPE seeks to unlock the freshest energy of creative Africa to develop original stories for local and global content markets. Based in Johannesburg, their award-winning creative team is comfortable working across genres, cultures, and time zones, drawn to narratives exploring personal and political revolutions. Between Storyscope’s founding partners they have produced, commissioned and distributed hundreds of hours of fiction and non-fiction content on broadcast, theatrical and SVOD platforms, including Al Jazeera, Netflix, ARTE, VPRO, MTV, Sundance Channel, BBC, CBC, PBS, ZDF, NHK, CGTN, FX, National Geographic Channel and Fox Channels. Recent non-fiction films include Whispering Truth to Power (2018), Ga Da Lomba (2019), Influence (2020), I,Mary (2021) and The Ghosts of Gadaffi (2021). Storyscope is currently in production on a series of films for BBC World profiling rule-breaking woman, and on Halo Daze, a fiction thriller with SKG Global.