About the
BELIFFestival
Also known as the Be Epic London International Film Festival, but you can call us BELIFF.
London always has something new and exciting to offer. Its effervescence awakens the senses and triggers a hunt after the best experience out there.
Entertainment has never been so competitive. On this vivid competitive scene BELIFF film festival raises the bar by scouting the best independent films each year and bringing them exclusively to Cinema Phoenix in East Finchley- a rare good looking art-deco cinema and the oldest in London ( opened in 1910). Belief was founded by IOANA and VLAD DOROFTE in 2016.
BELIFF is a platform for independent filmmakers with talent to showcase their creations to a large audience and reach out to professionals in the industry. Films will be judged by a panel of professionals and will be given award . There will be an additional judging, from the public, to which also an awards will be handed. To see the list of awards handed please click on the following AWARDS link.
Meet the Team
IOANA DOROFTE
Festival Co-Founder
Ioana comes from a busy acting background in both drama and film, dating back as far as 2005. She has an MA in Theatre from Kingston University and her work includes projects varying from stage plays to films and music videos. With a higher understanding of the craft she is currently working as a writer and drama tutor when she is not involved with the festival.Her experience covers several areas of film making: from acting to film production.
DAVID B.CRAIK
Festival Patron
Started his career at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where he trained in classical acting and theatre arts and at the renowned Bristol Old Vic Company. His training also included appearances for BBC TV Bristol. His career in acting and directing has included Repertory, National Theatre, WestEnd, Theatre-in-Education, TV comedy, Film, Music videos. Early work also provided invaluable experience in 16mm celluloid camera operation (Aaton/Arriflex/ Beaulieu). He is a founding director of the Man in the Moon Theatre, Chelsea (1981-2003) where he was Artistic Director, co-producer and script adviser. In 1985 he started teaching at the Academy DS Whitechapel, teaching theatre and incorporating screen acting on location. His work has taken him to Scotland, Wales, Ireland, former Yugoslavia, Poland, Jamaica, Uruguay, Brasil, Argentina. He is currently engaged in Cognitive Anthropology, namely fMRI brain mapping studies, (Wellcome Institute) having so far investigated Role-Play//Pretend Play, with Art and the Brain currently in development. He is an active member of the Royal Institution and the Royal Anthropological Institute and has spoken about Consciousness at science conferences in Arizona and Hong Kong.
NATHAN HANNAWIN
Vice President of Judging Committee
Having grown up in a North London estate working in film always seemed an impossibility to Nathan - it was always the posh boys game. This never stopped him from dreaming, however. For hours he would watch the countless B movies and westerns on daytime TV, he was captivated by Disney animations such as Alladin and The Lion King, the awe of Jurassic Park and Close Encounters, and had the life scared out of him by Alien. Into his teens, he began to understand film more but this was still very much as an enthusiast. Films such as Taxi Driver changed his perception of how character could be defined, Pulp Fiction and Momento on how traditional story structures could be changed, and Natural Born Killers for just how weird films could go.
Like many others, he came into film in the 5dmkII generation, at the same time YouTube became a huge platform and editing software became affordable and available. For the first time, it was possible for anyone to film, edit and distribute their own work and from there on he got the itch. So in his early twenties, he left my career in hospitality management to embark on film.
He received a distinction at foundation level and then went to study a BA in Film & Television, receiving 1st class honors for his degree. In the second year of his BA, he co-produced and directed his first feature film Sleaford Mods - Invisible Britain. The film was successfully crowdfunded and went on to sell out cinemas across Europe.
After graduating with a 1st, he continued developing his own web series Augury and acted as Director of Photography on the feature film UK18 directed by Andrew Tiernan. After the success of these, he directed the again successfully crowd-funded feature film Scales.
He has worked alongside the best-selling authors Jade Winters and Kiki Archer to develop their work into short films, the first of which Love on the Cards have received many screenings and won the Audience Award at the Palm Springs LGBTQ Festival and screen at InsideOut Toronto.
In 2018 he was delighted to receive the Film Director of the Year award at the International Achievers Awards.
DEE SOHI
Social Media Assistant
Dee has been fascinated by stories and storytelling for as long as she can remember. Undertaking a BA in English and American Literature and Classical and Archaeological Studies (phew! Tongue-fatigue) combined her love of fictional tales with real tales from the past. She continued this love with another degree at the University of Kent, this time an MA in War, Media and Society (School of History). A proud film fanatic, she even watches behind the scenes and used to watch her favourite films with audio commentary from the cast and crew, much to the exasperation of those around. When it comes to going out into the world, Dee likes to embody the capybara and befriend people from all walks of life (maybe not those channelling their inner crocodile, though). Animals and nature bring her a lot of happiness. She has a thirst for knowledge, which means her head is full of useless information!
SOPHIE COWLING
Social Media Assistant
Sophie is a documentary filmmaker and visual artist based in London. With an academic background in visual anthropology, she is passionate about interesting human stories and everyday lives. Her previous projects have included a docufiction about the experience of fear for women walking home at night, and a sensory ethnographic film about wild swimmers in Yorkshire. She is currently working on a desktop documentary about living with ADHD and is building an artists' residency for people interested in ethnographic methods of research. With experience managing social media for film festivals and the charity sector, Sophie is dedicated to promoting films with a social purpose and the spaces that celebrate these.
ALEXANDER HANSEZ
Swiss Army Knife
Alexander Hansez is a recent International School of Screen Acting graduate. He's studied Business Marketing at Canterbury Christchurch, Masters in Energy and Environmental Management at the Univeriste de Liege and Masters in Value Chain Management at the University of Kent Canterbury . After a life or soul searching he's found his calling and trained hard to enter a top school in acting in London. After successfully entering a school and graduating from it. Alexander is now focused on the entertainment industry. Starting by adding value within BELIFF. His skills and talent are welcome.
VLAD DOROFTE
Festival Co-Founder
Vlad comes from a demanding professional background where in parallel he has been busy developing art related activities (such as photography) and film projects. With his filmmaking endeavours tracked back as far as 2007, over the last 5 years he has been focusing exclusively on film production and consultancy. He has an accredited Degree in Photographic Technique and he counts several international awards and nominees for directing and writing, and a photography one. He also has a 5 years experience as a film critic. Among his interests he counts Business Management where he has an 8 years experience running a successful online business.
DAVID SHINE
President Of Judging Committee
After initially obtaining a BA in Visual Communications, David has for over 30 years worked in almost every area of film and video production. However, for the past decade he was a Film Editor at one of the world’s largest trailer-making companies outside of America, cutting 35mm trailers for feature films, as well as occasionally subtitling them for territories, world-wide. Previously, he’s also worked on commercials, dramas and documentaries; at Pinewood and Shepperton studios, and his more illustrious clients have included the BBC, CBS and Disney. Prior to his film and video career, he was for many years the Technical Manager of the Man in the Moon Theatre, but he has also enjoyed spells as a photographer, and even as an actor!
MARK UBSDELL
Festival Patron
Mark Ubsdell was a co-founder of Europe’s largest film promotion house PPC (London/LA) leading the world in the creation of trailers, documentaries and commercials for the major U.S. studio campaigns. In a career beginning in Film marketing, then independent production and distribution. This included such areas as funding options, pre-production planning, scripting, camera operating, working with crews, location logistics and scheduling, editing and sound post production, and finally, procuring television and video sales in the rapidly changing international marketplace.
Janet Horn
Judge
Janet has a dynamic background including a Bsc honors degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders and a MA in Voice studies (with distinction) at Central School of Speech and Drama where she bridged her passion for performance arts with her scientific background. While she started her professional life as a Speech and Language Therapist, her lifelong passion for film and acting could not be denied and she gradually shaped her career to become a voice, accent and movement teacher with a specialism for screen actor dialect coaching. She has worked in various drama schools helping actors discover the joy of their vocal potential. She has provided both private and onset dialect coaching for various films and TV productions including season 3 of the Starz series Black Sails. She currently coaches clients all over the world with online accent and voice training and she loves supporting the skill, creativity and confidence of the screen acting community. Janet also loves acting and has been in a number of stage and screen productions herself and more recently she has discovered an interest in screenplay writing. She loves singing, playing guitar and catering to every whim of her two pet house rabbits-who rule her household.
STEPHANIE GRAY
Social Media Assistant
Stephanie is currently undertaking a degree in Marketing, Communication and Design at St Mary's University Twickenham. Having a background in Social Media content through other volunteer roles.
She is currently creating with her production team as part of her University degree a short awareness film about Stalking for a Charity. Other projects include: Magazine design and a CRM research project. With such a varying University degree she hopes to achieve and expand her knowledge of Marketing through digital content. That aside, she enjoys exploring and Highland dancing.
MONICA SANCHEZ
Social Media Assistant
Monica Sanchez has a BA in Translation and Interpreting, specialized in Media Translation. Through working as a Subtitling Technician for films in a big company and, right now, being a quality analyst for one of the entertainment apps known as TikTok, she has discovered a big interest in the entertainment industry. Thanks to that, she is very interested in social media in general, and on how to promote films these days. Apart from that, she really likes nature and travelling around the world.
BECKY CROWE
Video Editor
Becky has always had an interest in film, spending most of her childhood watching animation films and all the behind the scene features. She has always had a creative mind, taking time to draw and paint.
Becky has a BA (Hons) in Applied Media, taking her interest in film further. She always enjoyed editing so was happy to take on the challenge of the trailer for BELIFF.
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Krieg (feature) |
Ray Richardson - Our Side Of The Water |
Seeing Him |
Limbo |
LifeInk |
Living On A Dollar A Day (Feature, Doc). |
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PC |
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LAURELS |
JAZZ |
A Night Without copy |
AWAY -Poster |