Six early-career artist-filmmakers have been selected for the seventh edition of Film London’s FLAMIN Fellowship scheme, a programme offering mentoring, funding and support to develop a new moving image work.

The FLAMIN Fellowship aims to support the most exciting and innovative artist filmmakers at the early stages of their careers. Investing a total of £15,000 in artists' development bursaries, each artist will receive seed finance of £2,500 and participate in a series of monthly workshops, delivered in partnership with moving image artists and a network of film and arts organisations.

The selected artists are:
Ama Dogbe
Nia Fekri
Gregor Petrikovič
Harmeet Rahal
Yv Shells
Xianyi Zhang

Ranging from experimental narrative filmmaking to work using game engines and artificial intelligence, the six artists selected for this year’s FLAMIN Fellowship feature a striking array of approaches to the moving image in work that asks important questions of our contemporary world.

Ama Dogbe is a British-Ghanaian artist who builds video games, digital animations and audio-visual installations to explore autobiographical and utopian themes. Moving freely between digital and analogue media, from photogrammetry to painting, she takes an experimental DIY and collaborative approach to new technologies, producing unconventional outcomes.

Nia Fekri is a British-Iranian multidisciplinary artist and facilitator, working primarily with moving image, writing and performance. Her practice is driven by a need to capture the fragmentary and ghostly nature of immigrant experiences, familial relationships and intimate spaces.

With a background in philosophy, photography and dance, Gregor Petrikovič works with bodies and movement to engage with themes of human connection. His recent work brings together generative AI with a personal audio archive of friends, partners and acquaintances, creating a stream of synthetic images from remembered conversations.

Harmeet Singh Rahal is an artist from Mumbai, now based in London. In his work, he invites audiences to consider how stories shape our collective sense of self, community and belonging. Working against the grain of dominant narratives of Indian history and contemporary life, he uses a collage of moving image, performance, music, writing and tactile sculptural installations to create a new poetics of resistance.

Yv Shells is an artist, musician and screenwriter from Walworth, South London. In his practice, he bring marginalised perspectives into the centre, redressing historical power structures to redefine how we understand questions of identity in British society. His recent work has explored the DIY ethics of Black British music and the adverse effects of technology on global majority communities.

Xianyi (Andy) Zhang is a London-based moving image artist whose narrative-rich works are inspired by her experience of growing up in Shanghai. Her work looks at the contrary experiences of alienation and self-discovery experienced in urban environments, with a creative cinematic approach to visual form.

Adrian Wootton OBE, Chief Executive of Film London and the British Film Commission, said: “As Film London celebrates its 20^th anniversary year, I am immensely proud of our role in discovering and developing some of the UK’s most exciting filmmakers. In recent years we have seen our Fellows grow in recognition with screenings in the UK and internationally and it is vital that we continue to support and nurture artistic exploration. I am thrilled to welcome this year’s cohort and look forward to seeing the work they produce. Our thanks go to Arts Council England for their invaluable support of The Fellowship.”

In 2024, work by artists supported through the FLAMIN Fellowship has been screened at major galleries, museums and festivals in the UK and internationally. Developed through the FLAMIN Fellowship, Anna Engelhardt’s Terror Element (made in collaboration with Mark Cinkevich) showed as part of a group exhibition at Framer Framed, Amsterdam. New films by Ronan Mackenzie and Chris Childs receive premieres at Indie Cork and London International Animation Festival, and Edd Carr, Adonia Bouchehri and Mahenderpal Sorya showcased work-in-progress at the BFI London Film Festival. Seventeen Gallery in London hosted a solo exhibition by Joseph Wilson, while Asmaa Jama and Gouled Ahmed presented a moving image installation at The Africa Center, New York.

Previous invited speakers on The FLAMIN Fellowship workshop programme include artists Larry Achiampong, Esther Johnson, Noor Afshan Mirza&Brad Butler, Hetain Patel, Imran Perretta, Heather Phillipson and Marianna Simnett. Arts organisations including ACME Studios, Arts Council England, Artquest, Auguste Orts, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, BFI, CPH:DOX, DACS, Film and Video Umbrella, Forma, Jerwood Arts, LUX, Tate and Wellcome Trust have all contributed to the professional development arm of the scheme. Each of the FLAMIN Fellows is provided one-to-one mentoring with Pinky Ghundale, who is producer to Turner Prize and Academy Award winner Steve McQueen.

Established in 2017 by Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) and supported by Arts Council England and The Fenton Arts Trust, the Fellowship builds on FLAMIN’s successful work at the core of the UK’s moving image ecology. With a focus on early-career practitioners, The Fellowship complements FLAMIN’s wide-ranging programme supporting early, mid and later-career artists through FLAMIN Animations, FLAMIN Productions, the Film London Jarman Award and a range of significant development opportunities.