2040

Damon is an Australian actor and director. He has starred in several feature films, including Rolf De Heer’s THE TRACKER, Darren Ashton’s THUNDERSTRUCK and RAZZLE DAZZLE, Robert Connolly’s BALIBO opposite Anthony LaPaglia, PATRICK with Rachel Griffiths and Charles Dance and SAVE YOUR LEGS! with Stephen Curry and Brendan Cowell. His performance in BALIBO earned him an AFI Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His television credits include UNDERBELLY, HOWZAT, LOVE MY WAY, PUBERTY BLUES, SECRETS AND LIES, GALLIPOLI and THE KETTERING INCIDENT. As a director he wrote, directed and performed vocals for the 2011 winning Tropfest short film, ANIMAL BEATBOX, which has played at 25+ festivals worldwide. He was also a finalist in 2010 with ONE, which he co-directed with Gareth Davies. THAT SUGAR FILM, Damon’s first feature length film as a director, won Best Documentary at the AACTA awards and was a hit at the Australian box office. THAT SUGAR BOOK is his first published book.

Nick Batzias has sixteen years of acquisition, distribution and production experience. Recently he has founded GoodThing Productions after over 15 years at Madman Entertainment (MME) and as Head of Madman Production Company (MPC). GoodThing focuses on the production of Narrative and Factual projects for screens big and small. At MME he worked on the release of over five hundred feature and documentary films across various rights exploitation. As a key part of his role, Nick has assessed hundreds of scripts, treatments and rough cuts with a view to acquiring the films for distribution in Australia and New Zealand. At MPC, he produced a range of critically acclaimed and award-winning films, both narrative and documentary. Most recently Nick produced feature documentaries All For One, Westwind: Djalu’s Legacy and Spookers, Matthew Saville dark comedy A Month of Sundays starring Anthony LaPaglia and AACTA winning Australian box office doco smash That Sugar Film.

Anna Kaplan is a producer and impact producer with fifteen years of screen industry experience spanning development, production, distribution and outreach. She is a two-time Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Award nominee and a recipient of Film Victoria’s Women in Leadership Development Fellowship in 2017. With a strong track record producing linear and interactive content that tackles pressing social issues and inspires positive action, Anna regularly works in partnership with NGOs, educators, advocates, journalists, impact investors, philanthropists, corporations and community groups. Her work has been released on multiple platforms and utilised as engagement tools in classrooms, institutions and community settings. From 2014-2018, Anna worked in-house at Madman Entertainment, developing and implementing the impact strategy for That Sugar Film and working on the local impact campaigns for US feature documentaries The Hunting Ground and Life, Animated.

Virginia Whitwell is a highly experienced film practitioner and producer with over twenty years in the industry. She is the Head of Production for the newly formed GoodThing Productions after five years as Head of Production at Madman Production Company. She has co-produced and produced many scripted and factual projects including Save Your Legs!, That Sugar Film, A Month Of Sundays and All For One. Hailing from the UK, she has worked on numerous productions all over the world. Her extensive production experience includes projects for Warner Bros, HBO, Lucasfilm, EON, 20th Century Fox and Universal. Virginia is currently producing The Australian Dream, an Australian- United Kingdom co-production with Passion Pictures, with many other projects in development.