Experts & Tutors

Thierry is founder and CEO of peacefulfish. He offers 15 years experience in the communication and entertainment industry, bringing together a strong business consulting background, a very good understanding of the content industry worldwide, and a passion for innovative creative projects. At peacefulfish, Thierry is in charge of business development and is Project Director of many of the company's training activities, studies, business & strategy plans.

After graduating in Paris, he worked in London as a business consultant for mainly entertainment and telecom operators, then in France and Germany in Business Development for Vivendi and for ARTE (Franco-German TV station) in Strasbourg. He then completed an MBA at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy and at UCLA in Los Angeles, where he specialized in film financing and e-commerce. Following this, he worked on film projects in the USA with Mandalay Entertainment before becoming Head of Strategic Development for Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, near Berlin.

Juliane, Senior Partner at peacefulfish, is working in the creative industry since 25 years, providing business services to the audiovisual industries. As Executive Advisor she holds an extensive cross-industrial knowledge, specialising in financing and business consulting for audio-visual companies and entrepreneurs in the creative and cultural industries and in strategic advisory for public funding institutions and development agencies.

She is Member of the Board of Media Deals, a pan-European investor network and expert, coach, and moderator at investment and innovation forums, at business training programmes, as well as at leading business incubators. She works on several projects for the European Commission and she is director of the MEDIA supported investor-training programme ENTER EUROPE.

Christian Batist is game consultant, helping commercial brands and game companies develop and/or deploy their online and/or mobile game strategies. He worked with some of the most successful games and game companies in the world, such as Habbo, Runescape, Stardoll, Spil Games, Studio100 and Nickelodeon. He is currently VP Business Development for WildWorks, in charge of bringing the very successful kids game Animal Jam to new markets in Europe, South America and Asia.

Christian practices what he preaches. He is founder and CEO of Perfect Earth, a portfolio of games for kids that gradually lets them discover about the impact of their actions on the environment.
Christian is also a lecturer, teaching a variety of game courses at NHTV University, Fontys’ Academy of Creative Industries and the University of the Arts Utrecht. He mentors several game start-ups in the area of funding, business development, player acquisition and monetisation.

Founder and CEO at CHRYSALIS FILMS since 2007 (Distribution company): 3 Oscars nominations in 2012 for Albert Nobbs (financial coproduction and distribution France), 1 Oscar Nomination in 2013 for A ROYAL AFFAIR (distribution France).

By creating BUTTERFLY PRODUCTION in 1998 (production company) and CHRYSALIS FILMS in 2007 (films distribution), I first followed my passion for cinema but also for entrepreneurship. My four first years as a distributor have been the opportunity for various expermentations which provided me with a deep market knowledge, enabled me to set up a clear strategy and a wide network giving us access to some greatly prized Hollywood's talents.
BUTTERFLY INVESTMENT is the accomplishment of this vision I have of the future of cinema in France: like in any anglo-saxon countries, cinema will have to find financial solutions by appealing to private investors.

André Bernhardt has been part of the German games industry for the past 18 years and is very experienced within the online, as well as "offline" and mobile game publishing industry.

At the beginning of his career, he was part of the classical boxed console and PC-games industry, with the release of the PlayStation 1 at Sony Computer Entertainment. Afterwards he worked at German publishers like JoWood and Sunflowers, before moving to Cologne.
There he joined RTL Games and focused on console publishing. 2009 he discovered the F2P-revolution and moved on to Travian Games in Munich as biz dev guy.
Since 2012 he is working as a freelance agent supporting developers to find a publisher and vice versa while teaching at different high schools or giving lectures at games conferences.
Indie Advisor aims to be a reliable interface between developers, start-ups and publishers.

Eric Billet is specialised in Equity raising, structured debt & equity finance. Currently working in Cinequity Fund on a three-year co-financing and distribution fund with a Hollywood major Studio on a financial model, which has attracted several equity investor and financial institutions.
He also has been involved to finance a large number of independent films and projects, mostly from Europe and Asia.
As financial consultant, he participated in M&A of media companies, directly or through VC Firms.
Prior of this, he was CFO of Guilgamesh Sa, a Paris based company with a catalogue of a hundred documentaries and feature films.

Josef Brandmaier graduated in business and economics and analyzed within his degree dissertation "the film finance market and development of a new generation of mediafunds."

He started his career as a relationship manager for Bayerische Vereinsbank in 1993. In 2007 he became ICO / department director film finance for the Media Team of UniCredit Bank AG. In 2015 Josef founded UniFinance Media GmbH. Josef has been involved in organizing structured finance for a range of international projects including the new version of The Three Musketeers, Ironclad, Lily The Witch, Wickie, Cabin In The Woods, The Downfall, I Love You Philip Morris, and Eagle Eye.

In addition to his film banking work, Josef represents a group of individual business angels who make investments in film and TV projects. Besides that he is a member of the board of BBF (Bayerischer Bankenfonds), several Expert Groups, the European Film Academy and Managing Director of Argentum Media GmbH.

Pablo has recently set up L’Ouverture, a London-based consultancy that specialises in finding and exploiting project finance opportunities for producers, developers, publishers and financiers of films and games.

In 2013 Pablo co-founded and raised private investment for music publisher Great Temptation, which he has co-managed for two years. The company has financed the original music of eight film and TV projects. During that time he also obtained advance assurance for over 10 different film companies seeking SEIS (tax relief for start ups in the UK) and developed two film projects with its own production company.

Prior to that, he worked at Future Films/Taurus Asset Finance for 5 years; first in the production department, where he looked after the financing of independently produced films, and then at the structured finance division, where he was involved in both film and non-film related investments including EIS and the Spanish film tax incentive.

Jerôme Chung made his whole career in the Entertainment and Contents industry in different marketing, sales and distribution positions (Universal Music, La Fnac) and then as general manager of business units within Media Groups.

For instance, in 1996, he created WARNER VISION FRANCE, the first video publisher entirely devoted to musical and non-film programmes in DVD format, then he joined the CANAL+ Group in 1999 to head the Video and Music divisions of STUDIOCANAL, its feature film production and distribution branch.

In 2006, he collaborated as senior consultant for the development of the VoD platform UniversCiné, dedicated to independent films producers and distributors. In June 2008, he joined the Medici Arts group as director of business development of the medici.tv digital platform which exploits an On Demand web channel VoD service of classical music programs. In 2011, he founded Under the Milky Way, a service company dedicated to the digital distribution and marketing of films and audiovisual programs.

Nina Crone has produced over 30 feature films for her own production company, Crone Film A/S, and a number of television fiction films for Danish TV. Also through the last 35 years some shorter fiction films and documentaries.
Besides producing Nina Crone has line produced in Denmark and abroad, and has been monitoring production work as producer for completion guarantor, Film Finances, Inc. from 1997-2009.
She is now since July 2009 monitoring productions for Completion guarantor, EUROPEAN FILM BONDS A/S.
Nina Crone is on the board of several Danish film organizations among which chairman for Danish Producers’ Association.

Jason Della Rocca is the co-founder of Executions Labs, a first-of-its kind accelerator and investment platform for independent game developers. Formerly, Jason was a game industry consultant focused on business and cluster development, working with game studios and organizations all over the world. Prior, he served as the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) for nearly nine years, and was honored for his industry building efforts with the inaugural Ambassador Award at the Game Developers Conference. In 2009, Jason was named to Game Developer Magazine’s “Power 50,” a list which profiles 50 of the most important contributors to the state of the game industry.
As a sought after expert, Jason has lectured at conferences and universities worldwide. He is also co-chairing the IGDA-Montreal, is advising the ICT Practice of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, and is serving the GRAND Network Center of Excellence.

Derek Elliott has been in the entertainment industry for over 20 years working as an Animation Director, Art Director and Producer in several studios throughout Canada & Australia.

Derek moved into being a Producer in 2006 at Pseudo Interactive, where his experience and pragmatism quickly earned him the reins of the entire production team and oversaw all of the studio’s projects. In 2008 he joined Ubisoft Montreal to manage the development of Far Cry 3 for three years before moving on to helm the small indie dev team at Compulsion Games and produce Contrast for the launch of the PS4.
Derek is currently the Executive Producer at Execution Labs, a first-of-its kind accelerator and investment platform for independent game developers with the goal being to back the very best game studios in the world through mentorship, financing, and a collaborative community.

Samuel is the founder of Magellan Films, a production company based in Brussels. Over the last 7 years, he has been involved in the development and financing of documentaries and feature films. He is also a Consultant for independent film production companies.

Previously, he worked as a Program Manager for the United Nations Development Programme in North Africa and as Business Analyst and Head of Finance for multinationals in Paris, Brussels and Luxembourg.

He has a Master’s Degree in Business Engineering from the Louvain School of Management where he was Research Assistant in the field of entrepreneurship.
He attended screenwriting, producing and directing workshops at the London Film School.

Derek is co-founder and the Business Development Director for the Kuju Startups Fund. Derek is heading the fund's operations, and the production and business development of each portfolio company.

Derek first entered the video games industry as a business analyst at Kuju Entertainment – conducting ad-hoc research on global market valuations, revenue forecasts and demographics to help aid corporate decision making on new video game pitches to publishers. He then worked in production as a games designer at Zoë Mode – one of Kuju’s studios based in Brighton. Derek balanced the scoring systems of various motion capture technologies, including the Wii Remote, Kinect camera and Kinect 2 camera for over 70 songs in two games – Zumba Fitness: World Party and Zumba Kids – on the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles. Combining his corporate and production experience – Derek co-founded the Kuju Startups Fund for the company.

Thomas joined the Compact Media Group in early 2014, as the Group Commercial Director. Thomas has a background in finance for the creative industries, in the UK, Europe, the USA and Australia.

While as a financier he has been closely involved in achieving success for his clients working on all aspects of production and distribution. Thomas’s work has covered production, distribution and sales agents, in the independent and studio sectors; working with principals to ensure that their vision and practical requirements are met, to ensure they can focus on getting the best possible product to market.

Peter Gerard is a multi-award winning film producer (including a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award) and a pioneer in film distribution strategy. He made his first documentary while still a teenager and won an audience award at SOFA Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. Peter moved to Scotland in 2000 and made “Just to Get a Rep” – the definitive film on graffiti art and hip-hop culture, which premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2004. Since then his numerous films have won many awards, played at countless festivals, been sold for television broadcast in many countries, and have been downloaded tens of thousands of times. Peter is regularly invited to speak on panels at film festivals throughout Europe and the U.S.

Peter also brings 15 years of experience managing and developing online software applications. He has specialised in Rich Internet Applications development and has designed and programmed award-winning eCommerce and eCommunity applications for clients ranging from large financial institutions, governmental organisations, and commercial clients. He built the website for The D-Word online community of documentary professionals and is well known throughout the industry.

He combined his experience in the film industry and online digital experiences to co-found Distrify - the revolutionary marketing and distribution toolset. Peter has worked closely with co-founder Andy Green on the production and distribution of a number of films and together they have developed an innovative way to promote and sell films via online film trailers using Distrify.

Distrify is a powerful suite of digital tools that turn the entire internet into a movie marketplace.
Consumers discover new films through word-of-mouth, recommendations, or reviews. With Distrify's unique trailer-based shop, consumers do not need to find another platform once they see your trailer - they can simply click "Rent" or "Buy" or "Cinemas" and watch or engage instantly. People enjoy discovering and sharing things they like, and Distrify makes sharing and discovering films fun, simple and profitable. Distrify works best for the new generation of producers and distributors who are actively engaging with their audience online (and offline) and using social media.

Ralph is Managing Partner and founder of the media law firm GRAEF Rechtsanwälte. He is qualified as a certified specialist for copyright- and media law as well as a certified specialist for intellectual property law and also admitted as Attorney-at-law to the New York Bar, USA. He serves as an arbitrator of the Independent Film & Television Alliance, L.A. (IFTA), the global trade association of the independent motion picture and television industry.

Ralph Oliver Graef advises leading German and international film & TV companies, such as film producers, television stations (including IP-TV) and rights traders. He also represents international celebrities in protecting their privacy and publicity rights, as well as artists, including directors, actors, in protecting their creative work.

Ralph Oliver Graef is recommended by the publishers of the leading legal market handbooks JUVE and Legal 500 for the areas “TV, Film & Entertainment” and “Press & Publishing” (Legal 500 Directory 2014, JUVE Directory of Commercial Law Firms 2014, Legal Experts Europe 2014). He is recognized to be one of Germany’s best attorneys in Entertainment Law (“Deutschlands beste Anwälte”) by Handelsblatt/Best Lawyers.

Paul is a Partner at London Venture Partners which invests in the game sector and a Co Founder of Playhubs, a co working space for the game sector. Previously, he served as Managing Director at Unity Capital, a firm he founded in London in December 2004 advising on the Digital Media sector. Prior, Paul was the Head of Interactive Entertainment at Commerzbank Securities for about 4 years where he had global responsibility for the interactive entertainment sector. Prior to Commerzbank, Paul was on the media team at ING Barings for 2 years. Paul has helped media companies globally on transactions with a total value of over $1 billion. Mr. Heydon earned both a MBA and a HBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Founded in 2008 by Marc Jackson, Seahorn Capital is a boutique advisory and investment banking firm specialized in interactive entertainment, digital business building, social impact projects and gamification initiatives. Marc is a recognized expert in interactive media finance and has arranged and managed more than $150 million in project and equity financing for clients including Warner Bros (consumer products and interactive divisions), Eidos Interactive (a video game publisher), Film Finances Inc (a completion bond company) and several small and mid-sized companies in the interactive media, video gaming and the emerging "gamification" space.

Previously, Marc served as CEO of an independent game developer where he managed partnerships with industry leaders including Sega, Midway, Interplay, and Universal. Marc also led business development for Atari, and worked as a strategy consultant to help chart new media strategy for two of Europe’s largest media and television groups, Canal+ and TF1. Marc began his career working for Walt Disney Imagineering as a project manager on the design and construction of the Euro Disneyland theme park.

Marc holds an MBA from the HEC School of Management in Paris and a BA from the University of Michigan.

“Marketing is driving my thinking. In a film-project; Assuming I like the story, the characters in it and the director & writer behind it; its all about positioning, packaging and letting the right people know.

My goal is to broaden our crowdsourcing activities and trough that build a marketing machine never seen before.”

Tero produced and co-produced more than 15 feature films and built a reasonably wide network around the world in the film industry.
His latest produced film is Iron Sky, which has been heavily crowd-sourced and crowd-funded through a worldwide internet community. The film is distributed worldwide.

Christophe Mazodier began in 1993 as assistant to director-producer Volker Schlöndorff at the Studio Babelsberg near Berlin, where he stayed until he went independent in 2000. He produced his first film in 2002 with X-Filme Creative Pool, “Love in Thoughts”
(Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken), by Achim von Borries (Sundance and Berlinale 2004).

He returned to France in 2004 to establish first Short Cuts, a film finance consulting company to help producers raise international financings, especially in Germany, UK and Belgium. Among various clients, he helped Daniel Toscan du Plantier with Benoît Jacquot’ “Tosca”, Christophe de Pontfilly for his “L’Etoile du Soldat” or Fidelité with Cedric Kahn’s “L’Avion”.

In 2005 he established Polaris Film Production & Finance a production company based in Paris. Within Polaris he produced “2 Days in Paris” by Julie Delpy in coproduction with German 3L Filmproduktion (Spirit Award and César nominee, Berlinale 2008), Coproduced with German Tat Film and Austrian Lotus Film “Das Vaterspiel by Michael Glawogger (Berlinale 2009), Coproduced with Belgium Saga Films “Rondo” by Olivier van Malderghem, “H.H” by Frederic Sojcher, and with French Quasar Picture, “Prey” by Antoine Blossier. In 2010, he produced “ 2 days in New York” by Julie Delpy, which is a the sequel of “2 days in Paris”.
He also went to teach at various schools or universities, like ESEC and Sorbonnes in Paris or Science Com’ in Nantes.

European  Film  Bonds  (EFB) was  founded  in  2009  in  Denmark.  EFB provides tailor-made completion bond products to film and television producers, financiers, distributors and government support agencies.  EFB has to date provided completion bonds for over 160 film and television productions. With films bonded in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific; EFB has offices in Copenhagen, London, Stockholm, Madrid  and Melbourne.

Per is a founder and the CEO of EFB. He is an authorised Copyright & Entertainment Lawyer and graduated as a Creative Producer from the National Film School of Denmark. He has practiced law for over 30 years and was the Managing Director of Film Finances Scandinavia Aps for 18 years. He founded Biografklub Danmark (Cinema Club  Denmark) on behalf of The Danish Film Institute and established the European Collecting Agency (ECA). Per is the author of the 1st and 2nd Editions of “The Fine Art of Co-Producing”.

Petteri Pasanen, CEO of Finnish animation studio Anima Vitae, is best known for producing Niko 1 (2008) which has sold 118 counties, won many awards and was nominated for best Animation Feature at the European Film Awards. Niko2 – Little Brother, Big Trouble (2012), is traveling through the world.

He also produced the Cannes Prix du Jury winner Pizza Passionata (2001) and is a founding member of Finnanimation (2005), a Finnish animation producersʼ association which aims to strengthen long-term international relations and market for Finnish animation.

As a founding partner he is a chairman of board of AnimaPoint (2013), joint venture animation studio in Malaysia. He studied in London International Film School (1991) and made his Pro Gradu thesis on movie marketing in University of Jyväskylä (1995).

John is a serial entrepreneur and advisor in the technology and digital media sectors. He has experience in growing businesses (three start-ups- Animation/Film/Commercials Studio in the UK, two companies in Ireland and GM of a computer games company in Chicago).

He is a sector specialist in the Media-tech, New/Digital Media, Software, ICT, Games & Animation sectors and a skills expert in strategy development, access to finance, developing business plans, feasibility studies and business analysis.

John is well known for his investment advisor role in the Enterprise and Innovation space with Dublin BIC and as the National Manager of the Halo Business Angel Partnership which has invested over €50m in the last five years. He is also a voluntary board member of ‘FilmBase- The Irish Film Resource Centre’ and sits on the committee of the David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur of the year awards.

Roch is working in the videogame industry since 1999 and is actually CFO of BULKYPIX, a leading developer and publisher of videogames and applications.
He is also an independent consultant and financial expert for the capital games association.
Roch graduated from Ecole Nationale de Commerce with a DESCF and started his career as an auditor.

In 2000, he was the CFO of INDEX PLUS (one of the first French videogame companies) when the company was sold to FRANCE TELECOM GROUP and was renamed WANADOO EDITION.

From 2003 to 2005, as CFO he supported DREAMCATCHER (a Canadian videogame publisher) to set up and develop DREAMCATCHER EUROPE, its French subsidiary.

From 2005 to 2009, Roch was the Managing Director of MICROIDS, one of the oldest French videogame companies founded in 1984. He sold MICROIDS to ANUMAN INTERACTIVE in 2009.

Anne Sheehan is a UK chartered accountant with specialist experience in film finance, production and distribution.

As Director of Film Finance for Prescience she has responsibility for the financial assessment and business affairs of all the films that Aegis Film Fund and other Prescience managed funds finance.

Prior to joining Prescience in 2009 as AS Media Consulting she acted for a number of Film Fund clients. From 1999 to 2003 she was Director of Finance and Business Affairs at Renaissance Films.

She began her film career as an international operational auditor for Warner Bros. and was financial controller for Palace Pictures, BBC Films, PolyGram Film International and FilmFour.

Travis Winstanley is co-founder and Games Investment Director for the Kuju Startups Fund.

Travis first joined the Catalis Group (the parent of Kuju Entertainment) in 2012, working in the investor relations team and in corporate fundraising teams, where he was responsible for authoring financial reports and helping raise over €5 million in debt, equity and UK government grants for the Catalis Group [XAE1.DE] respectively.

Travis now leads the design of new funds, preparing financial models for the fund’s performance, managing the financial evaluation and implementation of investments, and building relationships with family offices, high-net worth investors and angel investors.

Travis holds a degree in General Engineering from the University of Cambridge.