Producer & Director

David Rane is a BAFTA-winning producer and director, who over the last 20 years has produced many award-winning documentary films for national and international broadcasters, a number of animated films, and a number of short fiction films. His company, Soilsiú Films, have their work screened in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Taiwan, Finland, the United States, New Zealand, and more. Soilsiú Films received EU MEDIA Programme Single Project funding in 2002 and 2010, and Creative Europe Development funding in 2012 and 2014, and Slate funding support in 2005 and 2021.

David was a graduate of the M.A Film and Televsion course at the University of London (Goldsmiths College) in 1993. He was on the Executive Committee of Screen Producers Ireland (the Irish Producer’s representative body) for four years, and has taught film making at both the University of London and the Dublin Institute of Technology. He is a graduate of EAVE (European Producers Programme 1999), and EURODOC 2014. David is also the founder and festival director of the Guth Gafa international Documentary Film Festival, which held its 14th edition in 2020.

Director

Neasa Ní Chianáín, trained at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, and worked as a freelance Art Director on Irish feature film and television projects, before switching to docs in 2001. She has directed 9 single docs (5 of which are feature length) and one tv series. The docs include ‘Frank Ned & Busy Lizzie’, which won Best Feature Doc at The Celtic Film Festival 2004, and was sold around the world, including ZDF, ARTE and YLE. ‘Fairytale of Kathmandu’ world premiered at IDFA 2007, in competition. The film won 3 Best Documentary/Director awards and screened on YLE and Canvas. 'The Stranger', had its world premiere Locarno Film Festival. Her last film, 'In Loco Parentis' (aka 'School Life'), has been a world-wide success, premiering at Sundance 2017. It won the Special Jury Prize at the San Francisco Film Festival, and the Prix du Public at Visions du Reel in Nyon. Neasa is currently in post-production on a new feature documentary, 'The Alexander Complex', and has just completed production on Young Plato, a feature length documentary set in a boys school in Belfast, world premiering at Doc NYC, in competition.    

Neasa has regularly guest lectured at Coleraine University, Maynooth University and DKIT. She has also been a Juror at IFTA, Cork Film Festival and Docville.

Production Sound Mixer & Editor

Reto has been a longtime collaborator with Soilsiú Films and has been a key crew member on most of our projects.

As production sound mixer and editor, Reto Stamm has over twenty years of experience and has traveled to five continents recording sound for film. Equally at home in the documentary and fiction genres, Reto maintains longstanding collaborations with Swiss and European filmmakers. He has recorded sound on set and on location for Neasa Ní Chianáin, Sabine Gisiger, Anka Schmid, Arami Ullón, Marcel Gisler, Greg Zglinksi and Peter Greenaway, among others.<br><br>

Reto regularly teaches sound for film at art schools and master classes in Switzerland and Germany. He is a member of both the European and Swiss Film Academies.