MARA MANZOLINI

Get to know me

I am an up and coming London-based filmmaker and aspiring producer.

Having grown up in southern Switzerland, I became fluent in German, Italian, Swiss German and cover good knowledge in the French language. In high school, I specialised my studies in Commerce and Economics before following my passion for visual storytelling.

My first important step was at the Locarno Film Festival in 2014 when in had the pleasure to be a member of the second official jury “Cinema Gioventù judging the Short Films category.

Shortly after I had moved to London to study for a Certificate in Filmmaking at MET Film School, during which I had very soon the opportunity to produce two graduation films: “Toxic Hearts” and “Lighthouse”, and was 3rd Assistant Director on two MET feature films. Since, “Lighthouse” has been nominated in film festivals like The National Film Festival for Talented Youth (Seattle, USA) and The London Independent Film Festival (London, UK). 

As part of my studies, I’ve additionally worked as Post-Production Supervisor and Line Producer on “Upstage”, a six-part web comedy-drama.

Another important step for me was when - in summer 2015 – I had the luck to intern for Frank Spotnitz at Big Light Productions. During this period I had a great insight into the world of TV-drama productions like “Medici: Masters of Florence”.

After only completing half of my Batcher studies I was given from MET Film School the opportunity to move onto the Master's in Producing course what provided me the chance to deepen my knowledge of my producing competences and broaden my industry contacts.

Currently, when I am not working on large TV and Film production I produce my own visual contents as a freelance producer. Highlights from the last couple of years include the short informational video for RightsInfo “Human Rights: What can be more British than that?” on the future of human rights in the UK (winner of the Smart Screen Creative Awards 2016, Impact), online short films for Jamie Oliver’s Food Tube channels, as well as the production of "Shifting Focus" - a short informational film about the lack of Women Directors in the UK featuring Sarah Gavron, Caroline Bartleet and Emma Smithwick that has been released in summer 2017 in collaboration with Directors UK and their Women Director’s campaign. 

Other projects I had the pleasure to produce include two short films for Andy Serkis at The Imaginarium Studio “Different World” and “A Mo-cap Man enters into a Bar…” and a Screen South Random Acts experimental film about trans-sexuality named “Chrysalis Boy”.

After successfully producing her first independent feature film “The Innocent” in June 2017 I joined the Wall to Wall Productions team for a 9pm ITV series as Researcher: “100 Years Younger Experiment”.