I've nicked the title of this post from ABBA, as I'm in Sweden on my way to the Gothenburg Film Festival. In May, I'm one of the mentors at the RIFF Pitch Lab in Sestri Levante, on the Ligurian coast of Italy. As with the Riviera International Film Festival as a whole, the lab is specifically for documentary directors under 35. I was happy to have been invited to the event, run by an energetic team, and with a great mission statement - No Risks No Stories. The deadline for submitting projects in either the Open Stories or the Environment Stories categories is March 22nd. Find out more here Getting into the business and sustaining a career seems a big risk these days. A recent report from the Council of Europe's Audiovisual Observatory in Strasbourg came up with the startling statistic that 40% of the filmmakers making narrative films in 2015 then didn't make another one. The figure is very different for scripted TV - perhaps because of the streamer-inspired boom in that genre around t

I remember the Milly Dowler voicemail hack, which shocked the nation, closed down the News of the World, and set in train the Leveson inquiry on the culture and practises of the press in the UK. It happened in the week that after 10 years there, I left the BBC. Although I'm not a journalist, watching the drama series The Hack, which was broadcast at the end of September, made for ITV in the UK, and STAN in Australia, has brought back a lot of thoughts on why public service journalism matters. The seven part series brings us into the worl d of tabloid journalism, phone hacking, and the Daniel Morgan case - brought fully into the public eye by Nick Davies and the Guardian in 2009. I think I'd struggle to explain the case and its significance in British media and politics but there's a good explainer here. I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I'm very surprised about the amount of negative press reviews the series had in the UK. It's a complicated story, spanning decades,

Just as I was getting to university, the BBC broadcast a sitcom by Douglas Adams called The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which became an international success through a TV series, a film, a stage show, and a novel translated into thirty languages. One of the pieces of technology described in the book was the Babel Fish, a small yellow fish inserted into the ear which simultaneously translates from one spoken language to another as its nutrition processes convert sound into brain waves, 'neatly crossing the language divide between any species you should happen to meet whilst travelling in space'. I was thinking about the Babel Fish while reading about Apple's Live Translation feature available on iPhones from version 15 onwards. It can translate your voice or Facetime calls from and to English (both the UK and U.S types), French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Castillian Spanish. Still in Beta testing but it's the Babel Fish made real. I already see tourists using the Google Tran

The clocks have gone back, leaves are falling and Autumn is here. Pumpkins are filling the streets of Copenhagen ahead of Halloween on October 31st. The other thing that's out is posters of all the candidates in the Danish local elections, happening on November 18th. They're on every metal post, the railings of bridges, and trees all over the city. I love seeing this - an expression of people's pride in serving their local area. Local elections in the UK see a lot of flyers stuffed in letterboxes, and you don't get that same sense of community. The list of candidates is long so not easy to work out who to vote for... AI, shopping and celebrity focussed algorithms, populist politics, and goldfish attention spans are all valid reasons to be gloomy about the future of documentary, but there is light in the darkness! People are craving personal & international perspectives, authenticity and debate. They care about what their fellow humans are living through. We just have to let the audienc

A couple of weeks ago I was in Rome for MIA, the Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivi - the Italian content market combining movies, drama series and documentaries. I produced and moderated a panel about history programmes. I wanted to do the panel is because of how vital it is to bring stories from the past for audiences to recognise and learn from. The panel happened on a date which will go down in history, October 7th, the anniversary of an event which has caused so much death and destruction,am first on that day in Israel and then for the past two years in Palestine. As many countries try to rewrite the historical record and use history as propaganda, getting the facts to people through television is more important than ever. But informative and factual documentaries are under threat around the world. To pick one country, the USA, whose democracy is under sustained attack from its government, I was dismayed to learn recently that PBS' American Experience strand announced it would be

I was struck by seeing in the Linkedin post of Naomi Sesay who recently left Channel 4 that she's involved developing the first female-led Smart City in Matamp, Sierra Leone. While the news reaction to her post seemed to focus on what she called the rebounding backlash to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives that she had worked hard for in her time at Channel 4 - and of course it was important that she spoke out about that - there was less attention on her big idea. Like a lot of freelancers, I spend most of my time looking for work and opportunities. I've been trained to 'think of programme ideas' - and that's still the dominant view of creativity. Recently I've started thinking about creative business ideas that can scale. So rather than obsessing about a single production - which is usually dependent on a single commissioner and is crazily competitive - I'm looking to draw on my knowledge and experience to think bigger. Right now I'm looking to help in the development of audi