Sheila Hayman

Sheila Hayman has written and directed documentary films for the BBC, Channel 4, ARTE, Beijing TV and others, winning a BAFTA, Time Out Documentary Series of the Year, Arts Documentary of the Year nomination and a Robert Kennedy award.

She has been UK Young Journalist of the Year, the BAFTA/Fulbright Fellow in Los Angeles and a columnist for The Guardian newspaper.

Many of her films have focused on our relationship with technology. Her 1992 BBC film, ‘Horizon: The Electronic Frontier’ asked ‘What would the world look like with information as money?’ and foresaw ubiquitous surveillance, the computer in your pocket and DeepFakes, including their political risks. In 2017, as Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, she embarked on ‘Senseless’, about the difference between human and machine intelligence. In 2020 her work on the carbon footprint of ‘AI’ led to her being Artist in Residence at PIK Potsdam, Europe’s premier research institute on the climate emergency.

She also coordinates a creative writing and performance group at UK NGO Freedom from Torture, working to help refugees as her father was helped in the 1930s.