Build confidence and mitigate risk around mental health, wellbeing, duty of care, ethics, impact, accountability and storytelling

Typically 90 mins, one-off or ad hoc sessions, focused thematically around the needs of your production and team

Please fill our intake form so that we may link you to the most appropriate person. Whatever your needs, we are available to listen, support and help you find solutions.

MENTAL HEALTH & DUTY OF CARE CONSULTING with our Film Ethics & Care Consultants

Consultations offer structured support to help filmmakers and teams meet their duty of care to contributors, crew, and audiences — particularly when working with sensitive or traumatic material, complex relationships, and vulnerable people.

This service is grounded in the realities of documentary practice and focuses on clear, defensible decision‑making rather than abstract ethical debate. It is designed to support filmmakers at moments of uncertainty, pressure, or risk, and to help embed care into the filmmaking process as standard practice rather than a last‑minute response.

You might come to a consultation with questions about:

• Working with vulnerable contributors or communities

• Consent, boundaries, and power dynamics

• Psychological safety and working with trauma

• Safeguarding beyond policy documents

• Balancing care, creativity, time, and budget

• Ethical concerns arising at different stages of production; development, shoots, post, or release

If you are seeking more regular and ongoing support reflective practice might be better suited to your needs.

ACCOUNTABILITY & IMPACT CONSULTING with Leah Sapin  

Accountability & Impact Consultations are collaborative sessions to help filmmakers align production with individual impact goals, and/or ethical priorities in a practical way. The goal is to strengthen your film by striving for safe, accountable filmmaking for everyone involved – the film team, participants, issue ‘stakeholders,’ audiences, and society at large. As filmmakers, we are responsible for ensuring dignity, safety, factual accuracy, and cultural or regional knowledge, but we often lack resources or training to ensure attention can be paid to all, especially when navigating complex and evolving situations. Guided by the Film in Mind ethos of non-judgemental, filmmaker-led collaboration and support, our sessions will invite expertise – often outside of film – to help unpack ethical quandaries, address our gaps in knowledge, and guide our decision-making.

Where Reflective Practice seeks to provide space for filmmakers to think critically about their own practice and sharpen their focus on their professional skills and areas for growth, Accountability and Impact Consultations offer more practical support and hands-on connections. 

Sessions may involve, but are not limited to:

• • • Facilitated Sessions with experts using our network of people in academia, journalism, activism, advocacy, and media/film to workshop specific ethical and safety concerns with you, as well as address knowledge gaps
    • Developing an accountability plan with progress checkpoints; written agreements for collaborators; and/or interview guides
    • Crafting an impact strategy; reviewing impact grant application text; brainstorming partnerships and engagement options to support the film’s goals and ensure its successful launch

The number of sessions will be determined together as we assess the individual needs of the film.

NARRATIVE THERAPY-INFORMED CONSULTING with Poh Lin Lee  

Poh works alongside film teams in individual consultations, group facilitation and workshops. Sometimes she comes in to consult briefly on a project for a specific issue and other times she accompanies a project throughout its life.

Some of the things commonly explored in these consultations:

• Looking at your processes (like film editing or scripting) through a trauma-informed lens

• Discerning between co-creation and extraction in collaborations with human and more-than-human participants

• Designing ethical and specific approaches for the community or situation you’re working with

• Actively questioning colonial, patriarchal and neo-liberal influence on project structure and ways of moving in practice

• Supporting film participants through the process and life of the film including defining their participation or preparing for the film to go public

• Reviewing industry processes —like funding applications, casting, and Q&A preparation—so that you can have choice and be influential in your responses