Four talented DPs revealed as part of 2022 BAFTA Breakthrough cohort

Nov 10, 2022

(L-R) Alex Pritz, Diana Olifirova, Daphne Qin Wu, Charlotte Hornsby (Credit: BAFTA/Leslye Davies/Sophia Spring/Jessica Chou)

Since 2013, BAFTA has celebrated the next generation of talented creatives as part of its landmark Breakthrough programme. Now, 21 UK-based and 12 US-based stars of the future have been selected to benefit from the initiative in 2022, including four cinematographers to watch: Diana Olifirova (UK), Alex Pritz, Charlotte Hornsby, and Daphne Qin Wu (all US).

As part of the scheme, the four DPs, along with their fellow on and off-screen BAFTA Breakthrough participants, will enjoy a bespoke, year-long programme of support, mentoring and career development assisted by industry professionals. What’s more, the cohort will receive non-voting membership of BAFTA for a year, granting them free access to events and screenings.

The winners were chosen by an international jury including Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Ade Rawcliffe, Fiona Lamptey, Ruth Madeley, Nyasha Hatendi, Jodi Balfour and Bianca Lawson. Alumni of the scheme include Florence Pugh, Tom Holland, Letitia Wright, Daisy May Cooper, Charlie Covell, Aisha Bywaters, Kayleigh Llewellyn, Jim LeBrecht, Ember Lab (Games), Aadip Desai, PC Williams and Jessie Buckley.

Get to know the successful quartet and find the full list of BAFTA Breakthrough participants below. Congratulations to everyone selected!

Diana Olifirova

When Netflix’s Heartstopper stormed to streamer success earlier this year, it didn’t just launch the careers of its talented young actors – it was a breakout series for its DP, Diana Olifirova. Ukrainian-born Olifirova’s adroit approach to creating the show’s vibrant visual language saw her star skyrocket in 2022.

“It’s been amazing – very emotional,” she admits. “I feel like the story speaks to so many people, because it’s so pure, vulnerable, and heart-warming. There should be more stories like that. And it’s very nice to feel noticed for my cinematography and how it helps the story to be emotionally processed by people, because I think that’s the main thing you can do, uplift the story to the way people feel it.”

Her success has seen Olifirova inundated with offers of help. “I’ve had lots of people messaging me and asking to assist me and I can’t take them all! But I always reply and say thank you, and I’ll put them in a folder for when I need a trainee one day. If I need someone for a project and nobody’s available, I always look in that folder and choose someone that’s available.”

Olifirova, who hails from Ukraine, studied for her BA in cinematography at Kyiv’s Karpenko-Kary University of Film & TV, before doing her masters at the National Film and Television School. Her original passion was for still photography, “but then I discovered the moving image, and other art forms like painting, drawing and VR. I’m very excited about the merge of different art forms and the technology that is part of it.”

Olifirova is thrilled to be part of the BAFTA Breakthrough cohort and is looking forward to networking with different people in the film world. She hopes to work on a feature in 2023 and also aims to explore more art film projects.

Alex Pritz

Director-DP Alex Pritz has cut his teeth in the documentary world, most recently filming on the frontline of the battle for the Amazon Rainforest in National Geographic’s The Territory. His passion for filmmaking stems back to his childhood, when he was neighbours with the film’s producer, Will Miller.

“Every day after school, we’d get our little video camera and film each other jumping off something, or make a little mockumentary about some skateboard team,” he recalls. “We were just always filming and using film to explore the world around us.” After studying science at Canada’s McGill University, he started working as a professional filmmaker in his mid-twenties and has been carving a brilliant niche in environmental projects ever since.

Pritz is looking forward to meeting potential collaborators as part of BAFTA Breakthrough and benefiting from the tailored support the programme offers. “After finishing The Territory, there’s this interesting period where it feels like there’s so many opportunities, but I can also really use some help figuring out what those next career steps look like.”

Having experienced both sides of the director-DP divide himself, what would Pritz look for in a future collaboration with another cinematographer? “One of the things I learned from The Territory was trying to not just listen to the people in the film, and what they’re saying, and building that into the visual aesthetic of the film, but thinking about the way they would represent themselves visually. I want to work with other cinematographers who are open to that kind of fluid way – thinking about narrative autonomy and representation in different ways.”

Daphne Qin Wu

Daphne Qin Wu credits her desire to become a cinematographer to “always having a book in hand and being obsessed with stories”. Growing up in China, Singapore, Texas, and Los Angeles, where she now lives, the DP admits she didn’t have a classic ‘filmmaker childhood’ but found her calling for creating incredible images at film school (USC’s School of Cinematic Arts).

Part of the ASC’s Vision Mentorship scheme in 2020 and named as one of the ASC’s Rising Stars of Cinematography in 2021, now being part of the BAFTA Breakthrough US cohort for her deft lensing of The Angry Black Girl & Her Monster is the latest accolade to grace Wu’s glittering CV.

“[My cinematography] is very story-oriented,” she explains, “it’s very character-oriented because you have to visually manufacture it, almost like it’s a rollercoaster ride: you’re guiding someone through these emotions in the story. It’s so fun to do because every script and every director is different.” She cites the work of cinematographers Bradford Young ASC and Christopher Doyle as inspirations, as well as Hayao Miyazaki: “He’s not a cinematographer but visually speaking, there’s something about those films that echoes within everyone, right?”

Wu loved that the BAFTA scheme brings together filmmakers from all different disciplines. “I thought it was such a great opportunity to meet and find other filmmakers to collaborate with and find other people that I creatively jive with.”

A dream future project would embrace the extra-terrestrial. “I love science fiction, so something set in space would be great! When you shoot a lot of narrative features on the smaller end, you don’t run into that as often.”

Charlotte Hornsby

Growing up, Charlotte Hornsby’s father had a fascinating – and clearly fruitful – tactic to instil a love of film in his children. “If we wanted to watch a movie, we had to make a movie and watch it, so we made movies constantly. I was often the [camerawoman],” she added.

This early film education led her to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she could try out a range of disciplines, but behind the lens was where her heart was set. Her multidisciplinary experience has, however, only helped her cinematography. “Having had experience editing and also in art department, I’m very conscious of the harmony of colours and texture happening within a frame.”

Hornsby joins the BAFTA Breakthrough programme thanks to her work on psychological horror Master. “There aren’t a lot of American institutions that have that global reach that BAFTA has, and it’s my dream to be able to collaborate internationally with these incredible artists I admire so much,” she says. She is keen to seek mentorship and mentions some of the DPs she’d love to connect with – these include Robbie Ryan BSC ISC, Christopher Doyle and Edward Lachman ASC.

What’s the one piece of advice Hornsby wishes she’d been given when she first entered the industry? “That my background editing and in art department was a strength, not a weakness. I think people can be so siloed departmentally, but having the ability to speak in different cinematic languages is a gift and could be your great asset.”

The full BAFTA Breakthrough UK and US cohorts are listed below:

UK Breakthroughs

Alex Thomas | Director – Yorkshire Cop: Police, Racism and Me (TV)
Alyx Jones | Dialogue Editor – Elden Ring (Games)
Ambika Mod | Performer – This is Going to Hurt (TV)
Chloë Fairweather | Director – Dying to Divorce (Film)
Diana Olifirova | Cinematographer – Heartstopper (TV)
Emily Brown | Lead Designer – Alba: a Wildlife Adventure (Games)
Jack Rooke | Writer/Executive Producer – Big Boys (TV)
Jamal Green | Composer – TOEM (Games)
Joanna Boateng | Producer – Uprising (TV)
Leon Harrop | Performer – Ralph & Katie (TV)
Marley Morrison | Writer/Director – Sweetheart (Film)
Morag Taylor | Principal Technical Artist – Total War: Warhammer 3 (Games)
Nell Barlow | Performer – Sweetheart (Film)
Nicôle Lecky | Writer/Executive Producer/Actor – MOOD (TV)
Paul Sng | Director – Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché (Film)
Rose Ayling-Ellis | Performer – Eastenders (TV)
Runyararo Mapfumo | Director – Sex Education (TV)
Sophie Cunningham | Director – Look Away (TV)
Theo Williams | Director – Terms & Conditions: Deeper than Drill (TV)
Zachary Soares & Luciana Nascimento | Co-Founders, Creative Director & Artistic Director -Moonglow Bay (Games)