Keynotes, pan­els & case studies

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.

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.

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.

With over 30 years’ expe­ri­ence in kids and fam­i­ly brands, Julien Bor­de is Pres­i­dent of Medi­awan Kids & Fam­i­ly. Until 2018, he was Head of Kids and Gen­er­al Enter­tain­ment Chan­nels at Warn­er­Me­dia for France, French-speak­ing ter­ri­to­ries and Africa. Between 2005 and 2015, he cre­at­ed France Télévi­sions Kids depart­ment and estab­lished it as the leader of the Euro­pean ani­ma­tion indus­try. He was appoint­ed Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of France 3 in 2012, then Head of Dig­i­tal Pro­gram­ming with respon­si­bil­i­ty for AVOD/TVOD/SVOD. He start­ed his career at Dis­ney in 1997, where he remained until 2005, as Deputy Direc­tor then Exec­u­tive Direc­tor for Pro­grammes and Pro­duc­tion at Dis­ney Chan­nels France.

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.

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.