Abertoir
The International Horror Festival of Wales

Born in Mountain Ash, Lee graduated from the University of Exeter with a first-class honours degree in Drama and won the Cameron Mackintosh Foundation Scholarship to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

He directed his first screen project in 2009, picking up a nomination for Best Documentary at the Celtic Media Festival. He has since directed a number of drama projects, both in English and Welsh, including Doctor Who, The Bay, Vera, Tir, Wizards vs Aliens, The Indian Doctor and Casualty. He won the BAFTA Cymru Best Director award for his work on The Indian Doctor and was nominated for the Best Director award for a 3rd time in 2016 for 35 Diwrnod.

Lee's first short Want It premiered at BFI Flare in 2015 and played at festivals worldwide. It is now available to buy through Peccadillo. Gwledd is his debut feature film.

Roger Williams is an award-winning writer and producer working in both the Welsh and English languages. His drama series Bang won the BAFTA Cymru Award and Celtic Media Festival Award for best drama series in 2018 and he was nominated for a Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for his work on the show.

Roger has won the BAFTA Cymru screenwriting award twice for Tir (2015) and Caerdydd (2010). He has written drama for BBC, Channel 4 and S4C. His first feature Gwledd was shot in 2019 for the BFI, Ffilm Cymru Wales and S4C.

Roger is the CEO and Founder of production company Joio and has produced projects for the company such as Gwledd, Galesa, Tir and many others. He was an Executive Producer on both series of Bang.

Annes Elwy trained the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and made her feature film debut in the 2016 horror film Yr Ymadawiad (‘The Passing’).

She has performed on stage at Bristol Old Vic, Royal Exchange Manchester and with the National Youth Theatre of Wales.

She was nominated for a BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Actress in 2018 for her performance as Beth March in Little Women; and played one of the leads in the second series of acclaimed drama Craith/Hidden. In 2021 Annes has featured as a lead in two Welsh genre films, The Toll and Gwledd.

Steffan Cennydd graduated from Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2017 where he was awarded Guildhall’s Gold Medal for Acting and the Richard Burton Memorial Award; and that same summer he shot his first feature called Last Summer directed by Jon Jones.

Steffan’s theatre credits include a Summer tour with Shakespeare’s Globe in 2018, Under Milk Wood at the Watermill Theatre starring opposite Alistair McGowan and The Melting Pot at the Finborough Theatre in 2017.

He has become a familiar face to TV audiences with roles in Craith/Hidden, Enid a Lucy, The Pembrokeshire Murders and most recently Yr Amgueddfa.

Neil Brand has been a silent film accompanist for over 30 years throughout the UK and at film festivals around the world, and is considered one of the finest improvising piano accompanists in the world.

He has a very fruitful relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra with his acclaimed orchestral scores for Hitchcock’s silent Blackmail, Asquith’s silent Underground, Chaplin's Easy Street and Fairbanks’s Robin Hood. He followed these successes with two through-scored radio adaptations, The Wind in the Willows and A Christmas Carol, and scores for Hitchcock's The Lodger, and Jackie Coogan’s Oliver Twist. He is well-known as a TV presenter with five hugely successful Sound of … series on BBC4, is a regular presenter on Radio 4's Film Programme and Soul Music.

Prano Bailey-Bond is a director and writer who grew up on a diet of Twin Peaks in the depths of a strange Welsh community. Named a 2021 'Director to Watch' by Variety, a Screen International 'Star of Tomorrow' 2018, and a Genre Rising Star by Screen International and Frightfest, Prano's work invokes imaginative worlds, fusing a dark vocabulary with eerie allure revealing how beauty resides in strange places.

Prano's strong body of shorts – including Nasty, Shortcut and Man vs Sand - have screened at festivals including BFI London Film Festival, Tampere Film Festival, Sitges Film Festival, Underwire, London Short Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival.

Her debut feature, Censor, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2021, opening the festival's Midnight section. Prano is on the Advisory Board for Underwire Festival, is a member of Cinesisters, BAFTA and is also an award-winning editor.

Tony Dalton worked in the film and television industry from 1969 to 2015. He started at the British Film Institute and then was film programmer at The Everyman Cinema in Hampstead, London. In 1977 he joined Granada Television and went on to film research, working on documentaries and feature film projects for Granada.

In 1992 he became a freelance film researcher working for various independents production companies and the BBC. He has worked for BAFTA, during which he worked on various film tributes.

In 2002 he published An Animated Life about friend and special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, after which he published four more books about Harryhausen. In 2013 he wrote Freddie Francis - The Straight Story From Moby Dick To Glory about cinematographer and director Freddie Francis. His latest book is about friend and director Terence Fisher called Terence Fisher, Master Of Gothic Cinema (2021).

Johnny Walker is Associate Professor in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University in the UK. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, in addition to having written or edited a number of books in the fields of film history and popular culture, with an emphasis on horror and exploitation film and video.

A recognised expert on the history of horror and exploitation film, Johnny is an editorial board member for the book series Horror Studies (University of Wales Press) and journal MONSTRUM, and has provided expert commentary on such topics for BBC Radio, The Independent, The NME, and Real Crime magazine. He is regularly asked to deliver research seminars and guest lectures at universities throughout the country and beyond.

Nicko and Joe have been confusing, disturbing and delighting audiences with their unique brand of comedy since 2004.

Their infectious enthusiasm on stage and twisted creativity in their writing has resulted in many comparisons being made to other artists. These range from the surreal group They Might be Giants to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park.

We know Nicko and Joe most at Abertoir for their Bad Film Club, unashamedly providing live commentaries to some of the most awful pieces of cinematic sewage to ever be put to celluloid… and we love them for it.

Giles is a producer at Queensbury Pictures who developed, financed and produced the 2019/2021 SXSW festival hits Girl on the Third Floor and Broadcast Signal Intrusion. They are currently in pre-production on two further features and a documentary.

In conjunction with London's premiere genre film festival Frightfest, Giles and Queensbury also initiated and run New Blood, a scheme dedicated to nurturing and developing new and unproduced genre screenwriters living in the UK, which is where Giles discovered the script for Broadcast Signal Intrusion.

Prior to Queensbury Pictures, Giles was Global Acquisitions consultant during the birth of AMC's VOD platform, Shudder, and Head of Acquisitions at late, lamented UK distributor Metrodome.