
Screen Australia and Australians in Film announce the inaugural MENTOR LA industry mentorship program
Bruna Papandrea, Stuart Beattie, Deborah Riley and Eden Gaha named as mentors
Australians in Film (AiF), with the support of Screen Australia, has today announced the launch of an exciting new mentorship program: MENTOR LA.
MENTOR LA will match four early-to-mid-level practitioners who currently work in the Australian industry with dedicated mentors who work in the US, giving them the opportunity to gain international industry knowledge from people who have excelled in their field.
The inaugural mentors are: producer Bruna Papandrea (Gone Girl, Wild); writer/director Stuart Beattie (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Collateral); Emmy award-winning production designer Deborah Riley (Game of Thrones) and President, Unscripted Television at Endemol Shine USA, Eden Gaha, who was named as one of the most influential unscripted executives by Variety.
The pairs will be matched for a 12 month structured program specific to their area of work, allowing the mentees to continue to develop their careers in Australia and build on their existing knowledge with their mentor.
Over the year, the mentors and mentees will meet on four occasions three times online and once in person during a week of meetings in Los Angeles at the culmination of the program.
President of AiF, Simonne Overend said: AiF is in the perfect position to connect the Australian industry with the international market. Supported by Screen Australia, Mentor LA was created in the spirit of helping and supporting the next generation of Australian talent. It is all about investing information, ideas and experience back into the Australian market to make it more robust.
Screen Australia's Head of Business and Audience Richard Harris said: Mentor LA is a fantastic opportunity for up-and-coming talent to be guided by some of the most experienced and successful Australians in the industry. Working with these mentors is an invaluable experience, and we look forward to following the trajectory of the successful mentees and seeing the impact of the very first Mentor LA program.
The successful mentees will be selected based on their work experience, career trajectory in their chosen field, and their statement of purpose and goals. The mentees must reside in Australia and have professional experience in a field of endeavour that is shared with a mentor. AiF will manage and coordinate the program and applications.
The Mentors:
Born in South Australia, Bruna Papandrea launched production banner Pacific Standard with Reese Witherspoon in 2012. Since its launch, Pacific Standard has acquired and produced bestselling books into films, including Wild by Cheryl Strayed which starred Reese Witherspoon and was directed by Jean Marc Vallee, and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which was directed by David Fincher.
Pacific Standard is currently producing Big Little Lies starring Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley for HBO. Papandrea also produced the Summit Entertainment box office hit Warm Bodies through her company Make Movies. Her producing credits also include Andrew Jarecki's All Good Things, Noam Murro's Smart People and Jonathan Teplitzky's Better than Sex. Papandrea was also the executive producer on the highly acclaimed Milk from director Gus Van Sant.
Stuart Beattie began his career writing screenplays for Australian independent films, including the hit family film, Joey and the much-admired romantic comedy, Kick. He branched into Hollywood with the Oscar-nominated Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, which went on to become one of the most successful franchises in movie history. Then came the Michael Mann thriller, Collateral, which he wrote as a spec script. The movie starred Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx and became the highest grossing film Michael Mann ever directed. It was also nominated for two Oscars and won a host of other awards around the world.
A graduate from Queensland University and NIDA, Deborah Riley started her career as a set designer for The Matrix and later as assistant art director on Moulin Rouge. Riley was herself mentored by the production designer Brigitte Broch, for whom she worked as art director on Real Women Have Curves in Los Angeles and Alejandro Gonz lez I rritu's 21 Grams in Tennessee and New Mexico. In 2013, she was employed as production designer on season four on HBO's epic medieval fantasy, Game of Thrones. Since then she has been awarded back-to-back Emmys and Art Directors Guild awards for her work on the show. She was invited to speak on Visual Storytelling at the Smithsonian Institute in 2015.
After starting his career as a presenter for Channel Nine in Australia, Eden Gaha is now President, Unscripted Television at Endemol Shine USA, one of world's largest producers of unscripted television. Edemol Shine USA produces some of the top unscripted series in the USA, including MasterChef (FOX), MasterChef Junior (FOX), The Biggest Loser (NBC), Restaurant Startup (CNBC), Hunted (CBS) and Billion Dollar Buyer (CNBC). Gaha was recently named one of the most influential unscripted executives in Variety's Reality Impact special report.
For Mentor LA program guidelines and application form, please visit Australians in Film.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...