Saatchi & Saatchi has today unveiled the line-up of global talent selected for its 2023 New Creators’ Showcase, alongside announcing new commercial bidding support for the shortlisted talent.

This year’s showcase includes work from a broad range of disciplines, regions and creators, featuring short film, animation, comedy and music video content from creators hailing from the UK, US, Iran, Moldova and Ukraine. The 2023 New Creators are:

• Kyryl Volovych
• ILLIMITÉWORLD
• Kemi Anna Adeeko
• @Pervers3cowgirls
• Ibrahim K Muhammad
• Mahboobeh Kalaee
• Eugen Merher
• Arthur Studholm
• Tom Emmerson

Saatchi & Saatchi also announced that the New Creators’ Showcase will unlock additional commercial support for those shortlisted, beyond providing a platform for up-and-coming creators to exhibit their work. Working with an collective of iconic British brands including EE, John Lewis, Waitrose and the British Heart Foundation, the creative company will ensure that each creator has the opportunity to bid for projects in the 12 months following the showcase - a new commitment to ensure longer term support for those featured.

Through Saatchi & Saatchi’s existing partnership with Channel 4, one chosen creator will also have the opportunity to make a film for the broadcaster’s acclaimed Random Acts strand, which will be funded by Saatchi & Saatchi and will run across both Channel 4 and the agency’s television, digital and social channels. The chosen creator for 2023 will be announced later in the year.

The creative company’s 33rd New Creators’ Showcase was presented on the main stage at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity today by Saatchi & Saatchi’s CCO, Franki Goodwin. The showcase launched with a discussion about the role of advertising in shaping and crucially, funding, culture, with writer and director Raine Allen-Miller and Pete Spencer, Director of Development and Production at Searchlight Pictures, dissecting the opportunities that come from so many directors and creators now working concurrently on commercial projects.

Franki Goodwin, CCO, Saatchi & Saatchi UK says, “We are so unbelievably proud to bring the NCS back to Cannes for its 33rd year BUT the days of it being simply a spotlight are most definitely over. This year we are making a commitment to work with each of our creators to help them secure commercial projects with our clients.

We believe that whilst visibility is important, it’s only by working with these ten incredible new creators as part of our bidding processes and offering them an independent consultant, that we’ll be able to actively bring them into the industry on a commercial basis. Without a route into advertising, it’s impossible to sustain a creative career. Without ads there is no art. Let’s be proud of the role advertising plays in culture as we celebrate in Cannes – where the cream of film and advertising come to play.”

Since 1991, the showcase has provided a platform for up-and-coming creators at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. For the second year running, the showcase will also be presented at the UK Creative Festival in Margate in July, offering an exclusive screening on home soil.

About the 2023 New Creators’ Showcase creators

Kyryl Volovych - Prosa

Kyryl is a self-taught independent director & film editor based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Growing up in Odesa and spending his youth in San Francisco, Brussels & Warsaw, his parents instilled a childlike openness to the world, and his international background has a vast influence on his innate desire to experiment with storytelling in the narrative, short film, commercial and music video spaces.

After working as a documentary maker during the first months of the war in Ukraine, he now concentrates on projects that celebrate Ukraine through its heritage, culture, music and fashion. Kyryl’s work has been recognised at the London Lift-Off Film Festival 2022, the Berlin Indie Film Festival 2023, LAFA 2023 and the TMFF 2022.

ILLIMITÉWORLD - Bulletman

With no traditional upbringings in art or film school backgrounds, Aus and Marleaux create with the intention of breaking the boundaries. The two have been directing videos together and separately since 2016, and are members and founders of a multifaceted audio visual creative collective known as ILLIMITÉWORLD. The collective is comprised of directors, animators, music producers and artists and is constantly adapting and expanding its creative alliances.

Between 2016-17, the duo spent numerous months in France. Traveling between Baltimore, Los Angeles & Paris is how the collective’s taste in cinema was refined. From original pieces to entire creative rollouts for recording artists like Paris Texas & Uno Hype, Aus and Marleaux have had their hands in an array of projects. The two eventually stumbled into becoming the Creative Directors of record label / creative company HARDPINK Records based in Los Angeles, California.

“The world is y(ours)” is a mantra used by the group used as a reminder that each artistic offering is a view in to the world of their imaginations. Using An experimental combination of classical cinema, creative animation, and raw documentary style filmmaking. They share with viewers an avant garde perspective of the modern world. ILLIMITÉWORLD aspires to raise the bar of quality among the landscape of independent artists.

Kemi Anna Adeeko - As Above

Kemi Anna is a British-Nigerian filmmaker, writer and content producer committed to creating visuals that share diverse experiences. She began her creative career as a photographer and studied advertising which has informed her ability to create wholesome concepts. Her strengths lie in storytelling in different mediums whether big-screen films or small-screen social campaigns.

In 2021, she screened her debut short film in collaboration with Converse and John Boyega as part of the Create Next Film project, produced by Bounce Cinema. Kemi’s film ‘Stuck’ was selected for Aesthetica Film Festival and her self-funded film ‘As Above’ was nominated for Best Experimental by BFI Future Film Festival.

@Pervers3cowgirls - Gutter

@Pervers3cowgirls is a female run Instagram meme page delivering ruthless content. It is also a nameless director and creator working across music and branded projects as well as a forthcoming radio show. Film

Ibrahim K. Muhammad - Only Child

Ibrahim K. Muhammad is an accomplished short film director and director of photography known for his award-winning short films ‘SHEEP (2019)’ and ‘Only Child (2022)’. With a keen eye for visual aesthetics and a passion for storytelling, Ibrahim’s films have garnered critical acclaim and reached audiences worldwide. Ibrahim’s work explores themes of human connection, self-determination, and the beauty found in everyday moments. His dedication to the craft has made him a rising talent in the industry, leaving a lasting impression with his thought-provoking and memorable short films.

Mahboobeh Kalaee - The Fourth Wall

Mahboobeh Kalaee is an animation and film director from Iran. Graduating with an MA in Animation Directing from Tehran University Faculty of Cinema in 2020, her signature experimental mixed media technique is the combination of live-action with 2D animation and stop-motion, crafting films that exist to blur the line between the real and the imaginary.

Mahboobeh’s films study real-world imagery. Her form, narrative structure, and documentary-like approach, combined with experimental animation, are a perfect vehicle for her creative animated documentaries and detailed storytelling.

Her graduate film The Fourth Wall has been screened internationally at festivals including Sundance & BFI London as well winning many awards.

Tom Emmerson - Number One Candidate

Tom Emmerson is an English and French director from North London. After directing his first music video whilst studying Economics at university, he realised that he’d much rather dedicate his life to making films he loves than to spreadsheets he hates.

His project for AntsLive saw the artist undergo a crash course in horseback riding before heading to the Italian Dolomites to shoot a neo-Western music video for his latest single Number One Candidate. The video has since gained massive traction on TikTok and claiming over 1M views. Watch this space.

Arthur Studholme - What’s my name

Arthur Studholme is one of the funniest human beings you’ll ever meet. He’s developed a distinct and unrelentingly bold brand of comedy through his sketch show series ‘Uncle Shortbread’, all of which he co-writes and directs himself.

The key to Arthur’s brilliance comes from his inherent eye for performance and dropping seemingly everyday people into seemingly everyday scenarios before things gain momentum and they’re thrust into ever increasingly bizarre situations.

Eugen Merher - The Boy Who Couldn’t Feel Pain

Eugen hails from Moldova, moving to Germany when he was 5. As a kid he was fascinated with filmmaking, finding his feet using his parents camera and shooting action films with his friends.

In his 20’s he attended the prestigious Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg in Stuttgart, cutting his teeth making short films and commercials. He has a love for the unexpected and the unusual, particularly small town America, where his recent short ‘The Boy Who Couldn’t Feel Pain’ was set. This led him to a YDA win alongside winning Gold for 'New Talent in Directing' at Ciclope and the short film Grand Prix at Kinsale.

About the curators

This year's shortlist was selected by Saatchi & Saatchi curators Franki Goodwin, Chief Creative Officer; Jess Ringshall, Chief Production Officer; and Kate Stanners, Chairwoman and Global Chief Creative Officer.

About the panellists

Raine Allen-Miller

Raine Allen-Miller is one of the industry’s most sought-after commercial directors. Represented by Somesuch in the UK, she’s acclaimed for bringing her loveable characters and energetic, playful style to global brands, including Nike, Spotify, Squarespace and Virgin Media.

This year, Raine has also established herself as a distinctive voice in British cinema, with the launch of her critically acclaimed debut feature ‘Rye Lane’, a romantic comedy following two twenty-somethings, both reeling from bad break-ups, who connect over the course of a day in South London.

Born in Manchester, before moving to South London aged 12, Raine’s route into filmmaking saw her segue from studying Art & Media at the Brit School, to illustration at Camberwell College of Arts, through to a career in advertising. Working as a creative at Saatchi & Saatchi, Anomaly and Mother, before signing to Somesuch.

In 2018, Raine directed her short film ‘Jerk’, depicting an elderly Jamaican man’s battle with depression. The film premiered at the BFI London Film Festival to huge acclaim and caught the attention of Eva Yates, Head of Film at BBC Film. Yates and producer Damian Jones then approached Raine to direct ‘Rye Lane’, funded and distributed by Searchlight Pictures.

Guardian film critic Mark Kermode wrote:“[Rye Lane] will leave you with a smile on your face, a spring in your step and (hopefully) a renewed confidence in next-wave British film-making.”

Pete Spencer

Since joining Searchlight Pictures in 2017, Pete has helped build a diverse slate of UK and US projects. Recently, as Director of Development and Production, he worked across Yorgos Lanthimos’s upcoming films POOR THINGS and AND, as well as overseeing Raine Allen-Miller's debut RYE LANE and the murder-mystery-comedy SEE HOW THEY RUN starring Saoirse Ronan, Sam Rockwell, Adrien Brody & David Oyelowo. At Searchlight, Pete works across all aspects of feature projects: from talent tracking to building talent relationships, deep development, close script work with filmmakers, and overseeing production and post-production.

Before joining Searchlight, he was the Senior Development Executive at Big Talk Pictures for four years, where he worked closely with Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Simon Pegg and a host of other talent, seeing through development and production films such as Wright’s BABY DRIVER and Ben Palmer’s MAN UP. Before that, Pete worked for writer Hossein Amini and as a freelance script editor. His career in film began as part of Working Title's prestigious intern scheme in 2011.

Pete has also been active in nurturing and promoting new talent and has sat on the judging panel for Bafta Rocliffe, Creative England’s ‘Funny Girls’ Scheme, and LOCO/CTBF’s ‘Betty and Peter New Comedy Writing’ Program – the latter two he helped devise and manage.