Celebrating the next wave of Global creator talent

The Saatchi & Saatchi New Creators’ Showcase is a curated platform celebrating the most exciting emerging creator talent from around the world. Spanning film, animation, digital storytelling and beyond, NCS shines a spotlight on bold new voices shaping the future of motion.

The showcase is open to creators working across all motion formats, styles and disciplines. Each entrant is invited to submit one standout piece of work that best represents their voice and craft.

The 2026 New Creators’ Showcase marked its London debut as part of a new partnership with SXSW London, showcasing 11 outstanding creators from across film, commercial, animation and music video disciplines. The 2026 New Creators are Alfie Whiteman, Cass Virdee, Frances O’Sullivan, Iris Kim, Jasmina Wood, Leve Kühl, Lisa Mausbach, Lucy Knox, Melissa Mark, Sebastian Lopez and Werner Vivier.

Since 1991, the showcase has celebrated the very best in creativity, storytelling and visual innovation, providing emerging creators from around the world with a platform to be seen, discovered and hired.

Entries for the 2027 New Creators’ Showcase will open in early 2027. Check back soon for more details.

2026 New Creators

Alfie Whiteman

Director and photographer Alfie Whiteman explores the intersection of culture, identity and community. A former professional footballer for Tottenham Hotspur, he brings the discipline of elite sport to a creative practice focused on authentic human connection. His work includes a cinematic portrait of the World Toe Wrestling Championship for Vibram FiveFingers and Keep The Faith for Baracuta, celebrating the Northern Soul community. Alfie has also worked with On and Paloma Wool, and hosts the monthly NTS Radio show Sweet Tooth.

Cass Virdee

Award-winning writer-director Cass Virdee creates bold, emotionally driven stories centred on empowerment. A graduate of the National Film and Television School’s Directing Fiction MFA, her work has screened at the BFI London Film Festival, Iris Prize and Palm Springs ShortFest, and aired on Film4. In 2025, she won a Shiny Award and the Directors’ UK Best Director Award for Fight or Flight. Cass is currently developing her debut feature with Dorothy Street Pictures and the Brazilian feature Señorita with Nina Pictures.

Frances O’Sullivan

Frances O’Sullivan is a director, visual artist and photographer whose work blends glamour, horror and surrealism into a distinctive visual language. Drawing on influences from pop culture and the macabre, she creates provocative, vibrant imagery that challenges conventional ideas of femininity. Spanning direction, photography, performance and makeup artistry, her multidisciplinary practice has earned recognition from publications including Tatler and Dazed.

Iris Kim

Based in Los Angeles and originally from Canada, Iris draws on her early life in suburban quiet to build vivid, imagined worlds shaped by curiosity about people and place. Her work is sharp, colorful and emotionally observant, often exploring nostalgia and the intimacy of familiar (or invented) lives. Blending humour, style and nuance, she translates small-scale observations into visually rich, cinematic pieces. Her collaborators include Troye Sivan, Madison Beer, Helen Mirren, Julia Michaels and Heidi Montag, alongside brands such as MAC Cosmetics, L’Oréal Paris, Adidas and Nike.

Jasmina Wood

Jasmina Wood is a Czech-Iraqi writer, director, and producer from London, with a background in photography. Her work explores class, beauty, identity, and modern ambition through a distinctly British lens, blending stylised realism with humour and emotional intimacy to create cinematic stories rooted in youth culture, social observation, and the tension between glamour, power, and vulnerability.

Leve Kühl

Leve Kühl is a Berlin-based director working across both fiction and commercial formats, guided by a strong sense of emotion and human connection. Before studying directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, he worked as an editor in San Francisco. After three years abroad, Leve returned to Germany with a clear focus: pairing cinematic imagery with emotional honesty.

Lisa Mausbach

Lisa Mausbach's work lives somewhere between opposites: bold yet sensitive, playful yet precise. With a background in media design and photography, she directs commercials and music videos, always chasing the unexpected and finding beauty in imperfections, contrasts, and those quiet little contradictions. Her films have a strong visual instinct and a curiosity for moments that feel slightly off, yet deeply human. She builds worlds that surprise you and invite you to look twice.

Lucy Knox

Lucy Knox is an Australian writer-director working across narrative, documentary and commercial film. Her work explores human behaviour in heightened worlds, balancing tension and humour through precise visual storytelling and intimate performance. Her debut short An Act of Love won Best Direction (Australian Directors’ Guild Awards), screened at 30+ festivals and was acquired by The Criterion Collection. Her films Last Man Standing and Hot Mother screened at MoMA, Sheffield DocFest and Berlinale, where the latter received a Crystal Bear nomination.

Melissa Mark

Melissa Marks is an emerging filmmaker and student at Aardman College in Bristol, specialising in stop motion, documentary and comedy. Describing her approach as “telling big stories with tiny puppets,” she brings humour, emotion and honesty to her work. Her project Mummy Issues is a tongue-in-cheek exploration of motherhood and early parenting, blending warmth and wit with observational detail. The film has been nominated for Best Animation (Will Vinton Award) at the McMinnville Short Film Festival and selected for the Barcelona Indie Filmmaker’s Festival.

Sebastian Lopez

Sebastian Lopez creates immediate, performance-driven films shaped by rhythm, edit and unscripted energy. Influenced by meme culture and everyday chaos, his work favours rawness over polish, building funny, character-led worlds that feel spontaneous and real. He began making sketches on his mother’s iPhone before moving into advertising, and has since worked with Globe Studios, Red Bull and Veo. His self-written short That’s AI explores humour and contemporary culture.

Meet the curators

Franki Goodwin

Chief Creative Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi

Award-winning creative and filmmaker Franki joined Saatchi & Saatchi almost a decade ago and has been behind much of the company’s most notable work for clients including Direct Line and Deutsche Telekom. Alongside her role at Saatchi & Saatchi, Franki is Executive Producer at Western Edge Pictures, a multi award-winning independent production company she co-founded in 2010. Prior to Saatchi, Franki founded and ran a boutique film marketing consultancy, ‘Franki&Jonny’, whose clients included Pathé, Warner Bros and Curzon Cinemas. A graduate of Glasgow School of Art, she has returned regularly as a guest lecturer and spent time teaching at Parsons School of Design in Paris.

Jess Ringshall

Chief Production Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi

Jess comes from a varied background having worked across entertainment and advertising, helping brands tap into cultural moments. She recently joined Saatchi & Saatchi from 750mph, where she worked with brands such as IKEA, Playstation and Bodyform. Prior to 750mph, Jess co-founded and ran a consultancy business which specialised in entertainment partnerships and helping brands and agencies better understand, access and navigate the world of entertainment. She also spent nine years at Grey, delivering Cannes- winning content for brands including P&G, Lucozade, HSBC and Volvo.

previous showcases...