Keynotes, pan­els & case studies

Mark Tayn­ton is founder of Marky Sparky Media, a new con­sul­tan­cy on a mis­sion to super­charge adult ani­ma­tion across Europe and beyond. A for­mer Warn­er Bros. Dis­cov­ery exec­u­tive, he spent over a decade help­ing scale ​“Rick and Morty” and Adult Swim glob­al­ly. Now focused on dri­ving genre growth and scale, fan engage­ment and cre­at­ing ani­mat­ed hits from new mar­kets. Mark works with cre­ators, stu­dios, broadcasters/​streamers and fes­ti­vals to unlock poten­tial and cham­pi­on bold voic­es worldwide.

In 1991, Anne-Lau­re Gué­gan enrolled in the edit­ing pro­gram at INSAS, the Bel­gian film school. After grad­u­at­ing in 1995, she spent the next 25 years build­ing a career as a film edi­tor (win­ning the 2016 Magritte Award for Best Edit­ing for Fab­rice du Welz’s ​“Alleluia”). Around 2013, she began con­sid­er­ing a career tran­si­tion from edit­ing to pro­duc­tion. In 2014, the founder of the Bel­gian pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Need Pro­duc­tions offered her the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take the reins of the com­pa­ny. Around the same time, she met Géral­dine Spri­mont, who became her busi­ness part­ner. The two pro­duc­ers take spe­cial care to ensure that their civic val­ues are reflect­ed in their edi­to­r­i­al choic­es. They pro­duce and co-pro­duce films (short and fea­ture-length, live-action and ani­mat­ed) that expose inequal­i­ties, pat­terns of exclu­sion, and the over­looked or for­got­ten seg­ments of society.

Cin­e­ma has always been Louis’ first pas­sion, and film dis­tri­b­u­tion his first job. His back­ground, how­ev­er, has tak­en him through a few unex­pect­ed places: after study­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Pub­lic Rela­tions, he devel­oped an inter­est in both inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and cul­tur­al pro­mo­tion. This led him to write a the­sis on Tal­iban com­mu­ni­ca­tion, before turn­ing his atten­tion to the Bel­gian film dis­tri­b­u­tion land­scape. Born in Bor­deaux, raised in the Parisian sub­urbs and liv­ing in Bel­gium for the past 11 years, he has grown to feel at home between French and Bel­gian cul­tures, with cin­e­ma as the com­mon thread. He has been work­ing at O’Brother Dis­tri­b­u­tion for the past two and a half years, an expe­ri­ence that has taught him a great deal in a rel­a­tive­ly short time — about cin­e­ma, audi­ences, and the many chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties of bring­ing films to the big screen. Beyond cin­e­ma, he is pas­sion­ate about sports and curi­ous about pret­ty much any­thing that tells us some­thing about peo­ple, cul­ture and the world around us.

Fab­rique Fan­tas­tique devel­ops, pro­duces, licens­es, and oper­ates high-qual­i­ty intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ties and brands glob­al­ly. Our focus is on cre­at­ing a unique uni­verse filled with won­der and fan­ta­sy, ground­ed in strong sto­ry­telling and fea­tur­ing authen­tic char­ac­ters, mean­ing­ful for a broad audience.

With over 30 years of expe­ri­ence in the children’s enter­tain­ment indus­try, Benoit Di Sabati­no is a pas­sion­ate leader ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing engag­ing, high-qual­i­ty, and diverse con­tent for kids and fam­i­lies around the world. As CEO of Ban­i­jay Kids and Fam­i­ly, a divi­sion of Ban­i­jay, he over­sees the devel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and inter­na­tion­al sales of a wide slate of ani­mat­ed and live-action series, dig­i­tal con­tent, and enter­tain­ment for­mats. Dri­ven by a mis­sion to deliv­er inno­v­a­tive and inclu­sive pro­gram­ming that res­onates with glob­al audi­ences, Benoit leads a tal­ent­ed and dynam­ic team of pro­duc­ers, writ­ers, direc­tors, and artists, while steer­ing the division’s cre­ative direc­tion and ensur­ing its finan­cial and oper­a­tional suc­cess. Act­ing as a brand archi­tect, Benoit has con­tributed to the suc­cess of numer­ous beloved fran­chis­es, includ­ing ​“Mum­fie”, ​“Titeuf”, ​“Casper”, ​“Code Lyoko”, and ​“The Yel­low Yeti”. Under his lead­er­ship, Ban­i­jay Kids & Fam­i­ly con­tin­ues to grow its port­fo­lio with some of the most icon­ic kids’ brands world­wide, such as ​“Total­ly Spies!”, ​“Mr Bean”, ​“Once Upon a Time…”, ​“LoliRock”, ​“Super Hap­py Mag­ic For­est”, ​“Street Foot­ball”, ​“Mini­Heroes of the For­est”, ​“Hel­lo Kit­ty: Super Style!”, and ​“This World Can’t Tear Me Down”.

Michael Ford is the founder of Three­wise Enter­tain­ment, a Kids and Fam­i­ly Pro­duc­tion and Licens­ing com­pa­ny with ​“Fam­i­ly Fan­dom” at its heart. Three­wise seeks to build par­al­lel fran­chis­es suit­able for the whole fam­i­ly for screens of all shapes, sizes and ori­en­ta­tions, with IP that can be gift­ed from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Michael began his career in Inde­pen­dent Film Pro­duc­tion and Financ­ing before mov­ing into the world of Live Action Chil­dren’s TV Devel­op­ment in 2015. In 2020 he launched the Pact Future30 indie, Three­wise, with a slate that spans Live Action and Ani­mat­ed devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion for Nick­elodeon, CBBC and Warn­er Bros. Dis­cov­ery. Last year, Michael and Three­wise adopt­ed Britain’s ​“most mag­i­cal” sag­gy old cloth cat, ​“BAG­PUSS”, assum­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for Glob­al Licens­ing & Mer­chan­dis­ing and Lega­cy Pro­duc­tion from top to tail.

Michael Hirsh co-found­ed three suc­cess­ful ani­ma­tion com­pa­nies Nel­vana, Cook­ie Jar, and WOW! Unlim­it­ed Media. Some of the shows that he devel­oped and pro­duced include ​“Babar”, ​“Tintin”, ​“Care Bears”, ​“Droids”, ​“Ewoks”, ​“Mag­ic School Bus”, ​“Franklin”, ​“Lit­tle Bear”, ​“Beetle­juice”, ​“Arthur”, ​“Cail­lou”, ​“Doo­dle­bops”, ​“John­ny Test”, ​“Castl­e­va­nia” and ​“Bee and Pup­py­Cat”. Ani­ma­tion Nation, pub­lished in 2024, is Michael Hirsh’s behind-the-scenes account of work­ing with such famous car­toon fran­chis­es and larg­er-than-life per­son­al­i­ties includ­ing George Lucas, Stephen Spiel­berg, and Tim Bur­ton. Hirsh is proud­est of his work build­ing the Cana­di­an and glob­al ani­ma­tion business.

Sixte de Vau­plane is the co-founder and CEO of Ani­maj, the AI-native Euro­pean stu­dio build­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of glob­al kids’ fran­chis­es. Ani­maj is built on a ​“dig­i­tal-to-every­where” the­sis - prov­ing audi­ences on YouTube before expand­ing into broad­cast, the­atri­cal and licens­ing - and today reach­es more than 242 mil­lion chil­dren every month, gen­er­at­ing over 22 bil­lion YouTube views a year across IPs includ­ing ​“Pocoyo”, ​“Maya the Bee” and ​“HeyKids”. A ser­i­al entre­pre­neur who pre­vi­ous­ly found­ed Nestor, Sixte is build­ing Ani­maj around one con­vic­tion: there’s a new play­book to cre­ate in the kids’ indus­try to build fran­chis­es for the new dig­i­tal-native generation. 

Antony Fras­er is the founder of Wave­crest Media, a man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy that helps media and enter­tain­ment com­pa­nies become fit for the future and max­imise share­hold­er val­ue. He brings a rare com­bi­na­tion of invest­ment bank­ing rigour, media finance exper­tise, and hands-on oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence across the full val­ue chain of the cre­ative industries.

Céline began her career in inter­na­tion­al sales in Hong Kong (All Rights Enter­tain­ment) and Van­cou­ver (Hori­zon Motion Pic­tures, The Green Chan­nel). In 2016, she joined Log­i­cal Pic­tures as Pro­duc­tion & Devel­op­ment Offi­cer, work­ing on films such as ​“Revenge” by Coralie Fargeat. She lat­er became Pro­duc­tion and Acqui­si­tions Man­ag­er, over­see­ing financ­ing for titles like ​“The Inno­cents” by Eskil Vogt and ​“Plea­sure” by Nin­ja Thy­berg. In 2021, Céline was appoint­ed Head of Invest­ments and Inter­na­tion­al Copro­duc­tions, focus­ing on bold, auteur-dri­ven films and copro­duc­ing ​“Tchaikovsky’s Wife” by Kir­ill Sere­bren­nikov (Cannes 2022). By 2023, she was VP Finance & Acqui­si­tions and worked on films such as ​“Monte Cristo” by Alexan­dre de La Patel­lière and Matthieu Dela­porte and” Emil­ia Perez” by Jacques Audi­ard. In 2025, Céline joined IPR​.VC as Con­tent Executive.

María Coro­n­a­do Álvarez , with a degree in Dra­mat­ic Arts and Per­form­ing Arts from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent (Unit­ed King­dom) and a spe­cial­ist in Man­age­ment and Admin­is­tra­tion of Audio­vi­su­al Com­pa­nies, has spent most of her career at Tri­o­dos Bank Spain as head of the busi­ness area of​the cul­tur­al sec­tor. Dur­ing her 13 years with the com­pa­ny, Coro­n­a­do has helped to make it a bench­mark enti­ty in the indus­try, financ­ing more than 1.1 bil­lion euros spread across more than 2,500 ini­tia­tives. One of the main val­ues​that its incor­po­ra­tion brings is to build bridges between the world of cul­ture and the audio­vi­su­al indus­try and the finan­cial world , thanks to its capac­i­ty for the analy­sis of risk and via­bil­i­ty of audio­vi­su­al projects, the gen­er­a­tion of rela­tion­ships between dif­fer­ent actors in the sec­tor and the pro­mo­tion of syn­er­gies and agree­ments. The new direc­tor of Audio­vi­su­al at SETT, María Coro­n­a­do, has a key role with­in the ​“Spain, Audio­vi­su­al Hub of Europe” Plan to boost the growth of the Span­ish audio­vi­su­al indus­try and sup­port the sec­tor in its tran­si­tion and evo­lu­tion to the cur­rent dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment to be more competitive.

Emmet O’Neill is the CEO of Sto­ry­Toys, a lead­ing devel­op­er and pub­lish­er of award-win­ning apps and games for chil­dren. Orig­i­nal­ly trained as an illus­tra­tor and design­er, Emmet has spent 30 years build­ing dig­i­tal prod­ucts and lead­ing cre­ative teams across pub­lish­ing, adver­tis­ing and media. He joined Sto­ry­Toys as Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer in 2013 and has helped guide the com­pa­ny through mul­ti­ple rein­ven­tions, from ear­ly paid apps to a suc­cess­ful glob­al sub­scrip­tion busi­ness. Sto­ry­Toys works with glob­al brands includ­ing The LEGO Group, Dis­ney, Mar­vel, Mat­tel, Has­bro, Pen­guin Ran­dom House, BBC Stu­dios, Para­mount, Nick­elodeon, and Sesame Work­shop. Sto­ry­Toys has over 300 mil­lion down­loads world­wide across major app plat­forms and was acquired by UK games com­pa­ny Team17 in 2021.

Jos­selin Chari­er, togeth­er with Antoine Rodelet, is the co-founder of HARI - the sto­ry house behind ​“Grizzy & the Lem­mings”, a glob­al slap­stick phe­nom­e­non, and ​“Mys­tery Lane”, its hit inves­tiga­tive series. Guid­ed by a sto­ry-first phi­los­o­phy, he co-leads HAR­I’s cre­ative and busi­ness strat­e­gy, turn­ing orig­i­nal IPs into glob­al, 360° brands across TV, film, licens­ing, pub­lish­ing and games. He is now build­ing the Grizzy­verse, a shared uni­verse con­nect­ing HAR­I’s orig­i­nal properties.

Chief Oper­a­tions Offi­cer Cather­ine Roy­croft has played a key role in the growth and suc­cess of five-time Oscar® nom­i­nat­ed stu­dio, Car­toon Saloon, over the past 17 years. Her role encom­pass­es over­sight of the day-to-day oper­a­tions of the stu­dio, plan­ning for future devel­op­ment, and engage­ment & col­lab­o­ra­tion with cul­tur­al, edu­ca­tion­al and com­mu­ni­ty part­ners to con­tribute to a vibrant and thriv­ing ecosys­tem. She is deeply com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing and devel­op­ing a cre­ative, inclu­sive stu­dio cul­ture which sup­ports the mak­ing of great sto­ries that inspire and enter­tain worldwide.

Silke Has­s­re­it­er is a researcher with­in the Pro­fes­sor­ship of Cre­ative and Enter­tain­ment Games and a lec­tur­er on the Mas­ter’s Game Tech­nol­o­gy pro­gramme at Bre­da Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences (BUas). Before join­ing BUas in 2007, she worked for 16 years as a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er and video edi­tor, con­tribut­ing to TV and doc­u­men­tary pro­duc­tions across the globe. Her research focus­es on the inter­sec­tion of work­place dynam­ics, skills trans­fer­abil­i­ty, and the rela­tion­ship between indus­try needs and cre­ative edu­ca­tion. She is cur­rent­ly involved in PANEU­RA­MA and Avenue CoVE, two Euro­pean research projects con­nect­ing high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions with the rapid­ly evolv­ing demands of the tech­ni­cal-cre­ative media sec­tors, with the aim of bet­ter equip­ping emerg­ing tal­ent for the careers of the future.

Mar­ket­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion & devel­op­ment strate­gist in the cre­ative, media and cul­tur­al industries.

Oscar® nom­i­nat­ed pro­duc­er with expe­ri­ence in10 fea­ture ani­mat­ed films, sev­er­al short ani­mat­ed films, doc­u­men­taries, and TV review pro­grams with hun­dreds of awards, includ­ing a Stu­dent Oscar, the Cristal d’An­necy, or an Oscar® nom­i­na­tion. He works as an expert for film funds, teach­es film school stu­dents about pro­duc­tion or pitch­ing, or works as a tutor, for exam­ple with CEE Ani­ma­tion. He loves his three daugh­ters (with one wife), books, col­lect­ing movie posters, and long-dis­tance running.

Kris­tel Tõld­sepp has been a pro­duc­er at A Film Esto­nia since 1996 and has owned the stu­dio since 2011. She holds an MA in Eco­nom­ics and has fur­ther spe­cial­ized in ani­ma­tion pro­duc­tion through numer­ous work­shops across Europe. Through­out her career, she has served as pro­duc­tion man­ag­er on over 30 ani­mat­ed fea­ture films and 10 tele­vi­sion series, con­tribut­ing to pro­duc­tions such as ​“Aster­ix and the Vikings”, ​“Niko and the Way to the Stars”, and ​“Titeuf – The Movie”. As a pro­duc­er, Tõld­sepp has pro­duced fea­ture films ​“Rag­gie” (2020) and ​“Poop, Spring and Oth­ers” (2023), over 15 ani­mat­ed short films and sev­er­al TV specials.

After study­ing busi­ness man­age­ment, Pierre Baus­saron joined the Danone Group in 2004, work­ing in orga­ni­za­tion­al man­age­ment and lat­er in mar­ket­ing. In 2010, he decid­ed to apply his exper­tise to sup­port com­pa­nies by found­ing his own firm, ​“À Boire et à Manger,” spe­cial­iz­ing in man­age­ment, strat­e­gy, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­sult­ing. He lat­er became a part­ner in a com­pa­ny focused on the spir­its indus­try, Liq­uid Liq­uid. In 2011, Pierre Baus­saron co-found­ed Blast Pro­duc­tion with three oth­er part­ners, focus­ing on the pro­duc­tion of cor­po­rate films. His involve­ment in audio­vi­su­al pro­duc­tion quick­ly expand­ed, and by 2012, he had devel­oped sev­er­al short films as well as a series of short tele­vi­sion pro­grams. Dri­ven by a desire to pro­duce ani­mat­ed projects more aligned with his artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties and to con­tribute to a more dynam­ic pro­duc­tion struc­ture, Pierre Baus­saron joined Miyu Pro­duc­tions in March 2015 as a pro­duc­er & part­ner. In this role, he pri­mar­i­ly focus­es on the company’s admin­is­tra­tive and finan­cial man­age­ment, the oper­a­tional exe­cu­tion of projects, and exec­u­tive pro­duc­tion. He is respon­si­ble for pro­duc­tion strat­e­gy and project devel­op­ment, togeth­er with Emmanuel-Alain Ray­nal. In 2019, he received the Trophée de l’An­i­ma­tion du Film Français, in 2022 the French Ani­ma­tion Pro­duc­er of the Year Award from Pro­cirep, the French pro­duc­ers’ soci­ety, and in 2023, he was named Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year by the pro­fes­sion­al mag­a­zine Ecran Total. In 2023, he won the Palme d’Or for the short film ​“27”, by Flo­ra Ana Buda and in 2024, the César Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture for ​“Chick­en for Lin­da!” by Chiara Mal­ta and Sébastien Laudenbach.

Syl­vain Dos San­tos is a pro­duc­er and showrun­ner and the co-founder of Chou­ette Com­pag­nie. He is a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for ani­me for over 20 years.

Jerome Mazan­darani is an inde­pen­dent ani­me and enter­tain­ment indus­try con­sul­tant with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence. He holds con­cur­rent roles as Head of Ani­me (Advi­so­ry) at 8 Lions Enter­tain­ment and Glob­al Strat­e­gy Part­ner at Kasa­gi Labo Group. He is a pro­lif­ic writer and LinkedIn thought leader, con­tribut­ing to Ani­me News Net­work, Car­toon Brew, Kid­screen, Total Licens­ing, and his own The Acci­den­tal Otaku newslet­ter on Sub­stack. His career includes a lengthy tenure as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Man­ga Enter­tain­ment UK, where he man­aged rights to over 500 ani­me titles, includ­ing Naru­to and Drag­on Ball Z for the UK/​Ireland. Jerome has brought more than 30 ani­mat­ed movies to cin­e­mas across the UK and Europe dur­ing his career, includ­ing Kat­suhi­ro Oto­mo’s AKI­RA, and Mamoru Hosada’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Sum­mer Wars. His Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er cred­its include Netflix’s Can­non Busters, and the 2017 Annecy Jury Prize-win­ning In This Cor­ner of the World, in which he pro­vid­ed gap-financ­ing and inter­na­tion­al sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion to over 150 ter­ri­to­ries. He is also Exec­u­tive Pro­duc­er on the in-devel­op­ment ani­me series, ​“Amy Wild: Ani­mal Detec­tive” for A and B John­son Group, and still very active in the busi­ness of devel­op­ing, pro­duc­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing excit­ing new voic­es in long-form ani­mat­ed sto­ry­telling for mature audiences.

Sif Sav­ery is a Dan­ish direc­tor who grad­u­at­ed from The Ani­ma­tion Work­shop (Den­mark) in 2019, with addi­tion­al stud­ies at La Poudrière’s Euro­pean Pro­gramme (France) and Chungkang Col­lege of Cul­tur­al Indus­tries (South Korea). Since then, she has worked as an Ani­ma­tion Super­vi­sor and Direc­tor for stu­dios includ­ing Nør­lum and Team­TO, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly devel­op­ing her own orig­i­nal projects.

Mor­gann Gic­quel is a 30-some­thing inde­pen­dent French film­mak­er who dis­cov­ered crowd­fund­ing cam­paigns while work­ing on her first fea­ture film ​“The Scrooge Mys­tery” back in 2017. Since then she has been a cam­paign man­ag­er on many cre­ative projects, most­ly around LGBTQIA+ rights. In 2025, she proud­ly helmed for Bob­byp­ills a cam­paign for the first open­ly Queer French ani­mat­ed fea­ture film ​“Jim Queen”, select­ed at the 79th Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. A sto­ry­teller at heart, with a love for ani­ma­tion, she’s set to make every pro­duc­tion she works on a sto­ry worth telling.

As head of DR’s Busi­ness Affairs, Mar­tin over­sees com­mer­cial and busi­ness affairs on com­mis­sions across all gen­res for exter­nal pro­duc­tions and dri­ves DR’s sports-rights acqui­si­tion. He is not new to the ani­ma­tion busi­ness. Mar­tin spear­head­ed the com­mer­cial and busi­ness push behind DR’s ani­ma­tion strat­e­gy, assem­bling a dynam­ic port­fo­lio of main­ly Dan­ish and Nordic ani­mat­ed series for the prime-time ​“Fredags Tam­Tam” slot and for roll­outs across DR’s plat­forms - from broad­cast to gaming.

Patri­cia Hidal­go is Direc­tor of Children’s & Edu­ca­tion at the BBC. She is respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing cre­ative and edi­to­r­i­al strate­gies for BBC Children’s and BBC Edu­ca­tion ser­vices across all plat­forms includ­ing BBC’s iPlay­er, CBee­bies and CBBC, with a focus on the strate­gic future direc­tion of media con­sump­tion and busi­ness mod­els, over­see­ing all the division’s con­tent out­put includ­ing in-house pro­duc­tions, co-pro­duc­tions and acqui­si­tions. Patri­cia has a strong indus­try track record and is behind some of the most suc­cess­ful shows in kids’ TV. Dur­ing her last six years at Turn­er she was respon­si­ble for the pro­duc­tion of the mul­ti­ple award-win­ning series ​“The Amaz­ing World Of Gum­ball”, as well as the Emile-award­ed and Baf­ta-nom­i­nat­ed ​“The Hero­ic Adven­tures Of The Valiant Prince Ivan­doe”. In 2017 Hidal­go was award­ed World Screen’s Glob­al Kids Trend­set­ter award for her out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the kids’ media indus­try. Pri­or to her role at Turn­er, Patri­cia spent 15 years at Dis­ney where she held a num­ber of senior roles in Spain, Italy and the UK.