CPH:DOX 2026: Meet our Future Proof Delegation

The ten cinema and immersive projects selected through our Future Proof development lab will be attending CPH:DOX - Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival from 15 - 19 March to connect with industry and production partners.

You can find out more about the participants below. To meet with any of them at CPH:DOX, please email jamie@docsociety.org

Delivered by FACT Liverpool and Doc Society, and supported by the BFI Creative Challenge Fund through National Lottery funding, the programme creates focused space for independent makers to develop bold new work that engages with evolving technologies of production and prepares projects for financing.

Future Proof asks the question: how can documentary makers adapt and learn from ever-developing technological futures such as AI, big data, and virtual/augmented environments, which simultaneously challenge notions of truth?

The programme consists of technological workshops, editorial mentorship and a series of curated encounters with luminary non-fiction directors and artists, such as Danielle Brathwaite Shirley, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, James Bridle, Brightblack, and Tuyết Vân Huỳnh.

Future Proof 2026 Participating Directors, Lead Creatives and Producers:

Alex Nevill (Filmmaker, Producer)
Project title: Buaireas na mara (Restless sea)

Alex is a filmmaker and director of photography based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has photographed several independent feature films as well as short projects funded by Creative England, Channel 4, Film London and the British Film Institute. His work has screened at major film festivals such as BFI London, Edinburgh, Ann Arbor and IDFA. Alex participated in film development programmes with Sound Image Culture (Belgium), UnionDocs Centre for Documentary Art (USA), the Scottish Documentary Institute (UK) and has undertaken residencies at the School of Art Institute of Chicago (USA) and Transart Institute for Creative Research (Germany). He completed an MFA at the Screen Academy Scotland and a PhD at the University of the West of England. Alongside his creative work, Alex teaches in the film department at Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh.

Anna Engelhardt (Artist, Producer)
Project title: Towards Dissolution

Anna Engelhardt is a video artist and writer whose practice gives cinematic form to the ghostly trails of information left in the wake of material violence. At the heart of her work are detailed forensic investigations into sites of extraction and occupation. She translates this research into fictional stories, merging CGI reconstructions and archival footage into video installations. Her works have been shown internationally, including at HKW, Berlin; ICA, London; Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media, Oslo; Lisbon Architecture Triennale; Kyiv Biennial; e-flux; National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; BFI London Film Festival.

Blu Smith (Artist, Producer)
Project title: The Odyssey of Recollection

Blu Smith is a filmmaker whose work explores how memory travels across generations, especially within Black and diasporic communities whose histories are often fragmented or erased. She uses archival material, non-linear editing, sonic collage, and experimental structure to ask how film can be used as a cognitive tool to map experience beyond language.

Comfort Arthur (Director)
Project title: Ursula

Comfort Arthur is a British-Ghanaian animator, filmmaker, and visual artist whose work blends bold storytelling with social impact. After studying Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins and Animation at the Royal College of Art, she moved to Ghana and founded The Comfy Studio, creating award-winning films such as Black Barbie, I’m living in Ghana get me out of here and The Underestimated Villian. In recent years, Comfort has expanded her practice into television, serving as an episodic director on the popular CBeebies series JoJo & Gran Gran, one of the first UK preschool shows to celebrate a Black British family.
Now entering a new creative chapter, Comfort is moving into immersive and interactive filmmaking. She is currently developing Ursula her first immersive documentary about endometriosis.

Eelyn Lee (Artist, Producer)
Project title: Conjuring Acts

Eelyn Lee is an award-winning artist and filmmaker of Hong Kong-English heritage, whose work has been presented at the Barbican, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and at international film festivals. Her interdisciplinary practice delves into questions of identity, archival justice, and multi-species migrations, blending costume, choreography, ritual, and sound to forge new mythologies. Through immersive, time-folding narratives, Eelyn constructs spaces where histories and futures converge - inviting audiences into richly layered worlds that defy linear storytelling and cultural boundaries. Eelyn’s latest moving image work, Anguilla Anguilla, way of the eel was presented at the São Paulo Architecture Biennial, 2025, and will be shown at the Karachi Biennial, 2027. She is currently developing Conjuring Acts and Diaspora Dreaming, two new immersive exhibitions for international touring.

Gweni Llwyd (Artist)
Project title: localhost

Gweni Llwyd is a Welsh artist whose playful, immersive practice explores the entanglements between personal, collective, and more-than-human experiences. Her work has been exhibited in the UK and internationally, including at the 59th Venice Biennale, Garage Rotterdam, ArtLabo Brittany, Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno. She holds an MA in Fine Art from the Piet Zwart Institute and is a Lecturer in Fine Art at Cardiff School of Art and Design.

Leo Nelki (Director/Producer),
Project title: Untitled River AI Film

Leo Nelki is the producer and editor of Maisha Maene’s 2022 short film Mulika (Locarno, Sundance, Clermont Ferrand among others). He has worked closely with Maisha since co-directing their experimental short film APA shot in 2021 in Goma, DRC. He co-produced the short documentary Lobi Ekosimba (2024, directed by Eli Maene). In 2024, he was selected for the BFI Doc Society RISE program for emerging UK producers. He curated the “Gathering Clouds” program of Eastern Congolese films at Image Forum Festival in Tokyo 2023. Currently Leo is in production directing his feature debut, a documentary hybrid titled “Sunday in Japan” (produced by Moon Road Media and Elda Productions, funded by Creative Europe). He is also currently producing the feature documentary Spaceman in Kongo, directed by Maisha Maene (funded by Sundance Sandbox, Ford Foundation, IDFA Bertha and Hot Docs Blue Ice).

Livi Wilmore (Artist & Producer)
Project title: Browser History

Livi is an artist and creative technologist working in Manchester. Her practice uses installation, mixed reality, immersive technology and playful art direction to visualise data, challenge perspectives and create mirror realities as cultural parody to address societal issues with a focus on Information Overload and our relationship with technology.

Oliver Bradley-Baker (Artist/Filmmaker)
Project title: Biome

Oliver Bradley-Baker is a Liverpool-based filmmaker working across documentary, non-fiction and landscape-based research. His practice blends observational filmmaking with essayistic, image-led inquiry, shaped by an MFA from the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford. He collaborates with researchers, communities and environmental practitioners to explore how technology, ecology and lived experience intersect. His films have screened within academic, community and arts contexts, and often emerge through slow travel, fieldwork and encounters with people embedded in particular landscapes. Oliver is now developing longer-form non-fiction projects using drones, LiDAR and immersive tools to interrogate the relationship between land, memory and technological systems.

Ornella Mutoni (Director, Producer)
Project title: The Silence We Carry

Ornella Mutoni is an emerging documentary director and producer with over 8 years experience working with award winning teams in film and TV. Her film work explores collective healing and the legacy of trauma through intimate storytelling. Her directorial debut ‘The Things We Don’t Say’, premiered at Aesthetica Short Film Festival, was selected for the New York African Film Festival and Palm Springs International Short Fest and was distributed by The Guardian. The film also earned her a nomination for the Gaby Rado Award for Best New Journalist at the 2025 Amnesty Media Awards. She is currently in development of her first feature film ‘The Silence We Carry’, produced by Counterpoints Productions and Story Compound.