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Industry Panel: Producer Talk
‍Now What? Festivals, Audiences & Distribution
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You've finished your film, but no one tells you what happens after.. Join our panel of award-winning producers as they unpack the realities of building a life for your film beyond production. From festival strategy and audience development to distribution pathways and social impact campaigns, this candid conversation explores what actually comes next — and the decisions that can shape a film's future.
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Moderator: Rendah Haj, RGFF Festival Director & Head of Programming
Guest Panelists:

Kauthar Abdulalim
Kauthar Abdulalim is a director, producer, and the Founder & CEO of Blacksand Pictures. Her award-winning short, The Ninth Tower (2021) premiered at the Academy Award–qualifying MIFF and streamed on SBS OnDemand - a journey spanning the festival circuit to a streaming platform. She secured funding from entities such as Screen Australia, VicScreen, and TikTok, for her online productions, #MATCHED & Salma's Season. Her Screen Australia and VicScreen-funded Tastes of Africa is currently in post-production. A Screen Australia Screen Enterprise Business investee, she has expanded Blacksand Pictures across the MENA region and Africa, including launching Saudi Film Nights at the Sydney Opera House in 2024. She is currently developing a long-form slate that includes, to name a few, a feature doc, a rom-com, and a dark comedy series—bold, cross-cultural stories built to travel.
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Mimo Mukii
Mimo Mukii (they/them) is a producer with the film collective and production company TEN DAYS, and an Associate Producer at GoodThing Productions. Their first feature PASA FAHO won Best International Feature at the 2025 Africa International Film Festival in Lagos, Nigeria, and had its international premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival in Spike Lee’s Black Perspectives Program. They have produced award-winning narrative shorts, including BLACKWOOD (BFI London Film Festival), TUĪ NÁ (nominated for the Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival’s Short Film Prize), and WHAT’S IN A NAME? (winner of the AFTRS Craft Award for Screenwriting, Sydney Film Festival).

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Adrian Ortega
Adrian Ortega is an award-winning narrative and documentary filmmaker based in Melbourne. A first-generation Australian, from an Italian/Spanish migrant family, Adrian was raised in the inner-western suburbs by his single mother. His debut feature Cerulean Blue, which he wrote, directed, and produced, premiered to sold-out audiences at the 68th Melbourne International Film Festival in 2019 and went on to win the El Rey Award for Excellence in Film Directing at the Barcelona International Film Festival. In 2016, Adrian founded Proud Wing Films, a production company focussed on bringing new stories and new voices to Australian cinema. The second film produced under Proud Wing Films after Cerulean Blue was Senie Priti’s debut short film Alba, which received a Special Mention in the Rebel8 Award for Outstanding Emerging Female Director at Flickerfest in 2021.

Additionally, Adrian produced Aarushi Chowdhury’s debut short film, Clown, which premiered at SXSW Sydney and screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Darwin International Film Festival, Byron Bay Film Festival, and the Australian Women’s Film Festival, where Chowdhury received the “One To Watch” award presented by Leah Purcell. Westgate, Adrian’s second feature film as director, premiered at the 73rd Melbourne International Film Festival and SXSW Sydney in 2025, and has been acquired by Madman Entertainment for ANZ distribution. Set in Melbourne’s working-class west in 1999, the film follows an Italian-Australian single mother raising her son amid financial strain and unresolved trauma following the West Gate Bridge collapse. Drawing on Ortega’s own upbringing, Westgate is an intimate, culturally specific drama anchored by a powerful central performance.

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Industry Talks Presented by Cinespace
Emerging Directors

Forget the rulebook. There is no single path into filmmaking. Join a candid conversation with new generation of directors about creative ambition, taking risks, navigating setbacks and carving out a career in the Australian screen industry and beyond.

Moderator: Baris Ulusoy, Directo & CEO Cinespace
Guest Panelists:

Celeste 'Andy' Diep:
Celeste Diep is a Sydney-based Cambodian-Australian director whose work has been focused on Asian and Trans/LGBTQ+ stories. Having grown up in Western Sydney with immigrant parents, her work focuses on individuals living on the fringe of diaspora and queer communities, and finding new ways of exploring cinematic worlds by combining Transcendental Styles of cinema with genre aesthetics. Her film “Happy New Year, Ms. Luna” (ReelGood 2023) which was awarded the Queer Screen Pitch-off grant and won the Audience Award at Mardi Gras Film Festival and Best LGBTQ+ Film at the American Pavillion Emerging Filmmakers Showcase in Cannes (2025)Her film, Interview with a Hero was featured at SXSW London, Sydney Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival and more, and won Best Director at St. Kilda Film Festival in 2026.

Celeste has previously been a festival programmer and camera assistant working on features such as Thor: Love and Thunder and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.In 2023, she attended the Apichatpong Weerasethakul “Playlabs” Creators Lab, mentored by him to make a film.
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Sam Calafiore:
Sam Calafiore is an Italian-Australian filmmaker based in Naarm (Melbourne) with a passion for telling stories about working people. Driven by a socially conscious approach to filmmaking, Sam hopes to tell stories that reflect the everyday lives of those often overlooked.

Kynan Clarke:
‍Kynan Clarke is a Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, and Monero filmmaker and screenwriter based in Narrm (Melbourne), and great-grandson of Uncle Albert Mullett and Aunty Rachel Mullett. His work centres Indigenous storytelling, with a strong commitment to platforming his community's voices through film and media. In 2018, he joined Typecast's acclaimed short film Elders as an Indigenous attachment, later taking part in the Inspirit Lab, learning from industry figures including Tony Briggs, Jan Sardi, and Elise McCredie. In 2024, he was selected for MIFF's Accelerator Lab. He recently co-wrote and co-directed Bush Boots with Isabel Dilena, premiering at the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival's Footy Shorts initiative.

Goran Stolevski:
‍Award-winning Macedonian-born and Australian raised writer-director Goran Stolevski came to prominence with short films including WOULD YOU LOOK AT HER, winner of the Best International Short at Sundance 2018. Collectively his shorts played over 200 festivals worldwide including Clermont-Ferrand, Palm Springs, Melbourne and Raindance. He also directed three episodes of the fourth season of International-Emmy-winning series Nowhere Boys. Goran’s feature debut YOU WON’T BE ALONE is steeped in Macedonian folklore with a genre twist. Produced by Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings at Causeway Films (THE BABADOOK), with Focus Features handling worldwide distribution, YOU WON’T BE ALONE premiered in competition for the Grand Jury prize at 2022 Sundance Film Festival, receiving rave reviews from critics. The film stars Noomi Rapace (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO), Carloto Cotta (DIAMANTINO, TABU), Anamaria Marinca (4 MONTHS 3 WEEKS 2 DAYS) and Alice Englert (BEAUTIFUL CREATURES).