Jennifer Sobol is director of international pipeline programmes for Warner Bros Discovery Access, a worldwide initiative whose stated aim is to “create inclusive pathways into the industry” through talent development programmes, mentorship, placement opportunities and industry exposure. She talks to Louise Bateman about the programme and how she is helping develop it internationally. 

Dancing on Road is directed by Lauren Gee

Attracting ‘behind the camera’ talent from underrepresented and marginalised groups is something Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) prides itself on. Creating the ‘pipelines’ to discover and provide opportunities for this talent falls to its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team through the four-year-old initiative WBD Access. And spearheading its international expansion for the past two and half years has been Jennifer Sobol, someone who has spent almost 20 years developing new talent.

“We need people to see film, TV, all types of screen as a viable and long term career,” says the director of international pipeline programmes, WBD Equity and Inclusion.

“But equally, as audiences, we want to see stories on our screen that reflect us as communities and societies. It makes good business sense. There’s a social imperative to it, and the film and TV industry should be for everybody. It should be a more welcoming and open place, and that will keep it sustainable, and it will keep it healthy in the long-term.”

Sobol joined WBD Access two and half years ago, when “it was still a nascent programme”, as she describes it. “At that point it was operational in North America, and it also had a Canadian presence. As the DEI function within the company was becoming bigger and was becoming recognised as a very important function, they also saw that production in the UK and internationally was ramping up, and since diverse talent is needed everywhere, there was a “right, we need to have someone in the UK” moment – because it’s our second biggest production hub globally,” she explains.

Prior to WBD, Sobol spent 10 years at the British Film Institute (BFI). There too, she was responsible for getting new talent into the industry, including helping to launch the BFI Film Academy, which supports young people from different backgrounds to get into the screen industries.

Mandem is an exploration of black male friendship

Sobol notes the key differences between the two organisations and her role within them. “I came from the BFI, which was a very public-facing organisation into a very big company that had so much production, so many different brands, so many different businesses and was so global in nature that it was important to learn how the business worked. So, I spent a lot of time learning from my colleagues in the US about what pipeline programmes are, how do we develop them, how do we make them impactful. And then I took those models and started working in the UK,” she explains.

Noting that “we always try and think locally when we’re delivering these programmes”, Sobol has overseen the development of a number of these in the UK since she joined in February 2022, notably Black Britain Unspoken (BBU), a programme that aims to address the underrepresentation of black creatives across director, producer and writer roles in the UK, by giving opportunity and voice to black filmmakers breaking into the media sector.

Coinciding with Black History Month, BBU launches its third season today (October 2) with the screening on Discovery+ streaming and YouTube channel of three new distinctive short documentary films:  Dancing on Road, directed by Lauren Gee, Mandem, directed by Joladé Olusanya and Lloyd the Instructor, directed by Donell Atkinson-Johnson.

Commenting on BBU, Sobol says: “We don’t hear enough about black British stories from black British people. [BBU] is about reclaiming the narrative, telling their own stories, and not feeding into tropes. These are stories about everyday people and it shows that the black community is not a monolith. It’s made up of incredible stories of heritage, of culture, of food of dance.”

Lloyd the Instructor follows a first generation Jamaican driving instructor

Gee’s film Dancing on Road, documents and celebrates the black British female roller-skating community, while Olusanya’ Mandem is “a poetic documentary that explores the deeper meaning of ‘mandem’ beyond its stereotypes”, and Atkinson-Johnson’s Lloyd the Instructor, is about a father whose is a first generation Jamaican and driving instructor.

Sobol says that while each of the filmmakers were at different levels of experience in filmmaking when they entered the process, their BBU short marks a directorial debut for each one of them. “They’ve done everything from create their vision, to direct it, to edit it. They’re all very promising,” she comments.

Though the BBU programme existed before Sobol joined WBD, it is a programme that is very close to her heart, not least because under her leadership a new ‘pipeline’ for the programme has emerged in a completely different part of the world to the UK.

“We’ve taken it to Brazil, which is really interesting and has been such a moment of pride for me to see,” says Sobol who oversees the EMEA, Apac and Lat Am regions, as part of her remit.

“Not every [model] will translate, but in Brazil, there’s an even bigger challenge with the black community working in film – something like 68% of the Brazilian population is black and only 3% work in film and TV. So, when we talked to them about Black Britain Unspoken, the response was that this is something that we really need here. So, they have put all their weight behind it, a lot of resource time from executives, and they ‘ve just finished production on their first batch of Black Brazil Unspoken films, which will be launching in November. And I’ve just seen the first cuts of them they’re beautiful.”

BBU came out of a ‘passion project’ within the WBD to hear more black British stories following the murder of George Floyd in the US, but other WBD Access programmes have launched out of different needs recognised by the industry.

An example of this is the recently launched WBD Access X Waterloo Road Directors Programme designed to encourage and support the pool of women directors in the North of England. In this case, Wall To Wall North, the production company alongside Rope Ladder Fiction making Waterloo Road, the BBC drama series set in a secondary school in the North of England, approached WBD Access to help find new directing talent for the show.

Sobol says the conversation to “open up” the directing talent already working on Waterloo Road was driven by the BBC asking its production companies to commit to a 50/50 pledge in terms of gender diversity in their senior creative teams. “We really have an opportunity here to find new talent for the show,” says Sobol about the programme.

Others, such as the WBD Access Unlock Unscripted Programme, which launched last year, have a global reach. In this case, the aim is to identify high-performing, mid-level unscripted producers who have had barriers getting to the next level or gaining exposure in different genres of reality. According to WBD, the 2024 cohort tripled in size from last year, with participants joining from the US, Canada, the UK, as well as Apac.

But with the industry in crisis, is Sobol concerned about the opportunities for underrepresented talent not just entering, but remaining within it?

“Everybody’s worried about how the industry has affected people wanting to leave and people having to leave. But my approach has always been to make sure that we keep in touch with our talent, that we continue to support them in ways that we can. People that have gone through our Black Britain Unspoken programme, we continue to promote their films, we invite them in to do talks, which we pay them for, we try and support them at film festivals and, when the time is right and when they need to have introductions, then we will help enable that. But I’m not a commissioner. That’s not my job. What I can do in my role is make sure that we don’t forget about the people that we’ve worked with in the past, and I think because of the numbers that we’re working with we’ve been quite good at that.”

Jennifer Sobol is director of international pipeline programmes for Warner Bros Discovery Access, a worldwide initiative whose stated aim is to “create inclusive pathways into the industry” through talent development programmes, mentorship, placement opportunities and industry exposure. She talks to Louise Bateman about the programme and how she is helping develop it internationally. 

Dancing on Road is directed by Lauren Gee

Attracting ‘behind the camera’ talent from underrepresented and marginalised groups is something Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) prides itself on. Creating the ‘pipelines’ to discover and provide opportunities for this talent falls to its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) team through the four-year-old initiative WBD Access. And spearheading its international expansion for the past two and half years has been Jennifer Sobol, someone who has spent almost 20 years developing new talent.

“We need people to see film, TV, all types of screen as a viable and long term career,” says the director of international pipeline programmes, WBD Equity and Inclusion.

“But equally, as audiences, we want to see stories on our screen that reflect us as communities and societies. It makes good business sense. There’s a social imperative to it, and the film and TV industry should be for everybody. It should be a more welcoming and open place, and that will keep it sustainable, and it will keep it healthy in the long-term.”

Sobol joined WBD Access two and half years ago, when “it was still a nascent programme”, as she describes it. “At that point it was operational in North America, and it also had a Canadian presence. As the DEI function within the company was becoming bigger and was becoming recognised as a very important function, they also saw that production in the UK and internationally was ramping up, and since diverse talent is needed everywhere, there was a “right, we need to have someone in the UK” moment – because it’s our second biggest production hub globally,” she explains.

Prior to WBD, Sobol spent 10 years at the British Film Institute (BFI). There too, she was responsible for getting new talent into the industry, including helping to launch the BFI Film Academy, which supports young people from different backgrounds to get into the screen industries.

Mandem is an exploration of black male friendship

Sobol notes the key differences between the two organisations and her role within them. “I came from the BFI, which was a very public-facing organisation into a very big company that had so much production, so many different brands, so many different businesses and was so global in nature that it was important to learn how the business worked. So, I spent a lot of time learning from my colleagues in the US about what pipeline programmes are, how do we develop them, how do we make them impactful. And then I took those models and started working in the UK,” she explains.

Noting that “we always try and think locally when we’re delivering these programmes”, Sobol has overseen the development of a number of these in the UK since she joined in February 2022, notably Black Britain Unspoken (BBU), a programme that aims to address the underrepresentation of black creatives across director, producer and writer roles in the UK, by giving opportunity and voice to black filmmakers breaking into the media sector.

Coinciding with Black History Month, BBU launches its third season today (October 2) with the screening on Discovery+ streaming and YouTube channel of three new distinctive short documentary films:  Dancing on Road, directed by Lauren Gee, Mandem, directed by Joladé Olusanya and Lloyd the Instructor, directed by Donell Atkinson-Johnson.

Commenting on BBU, Sobol says: “We don’t hear enough about black British stories from black British people. [BBU] is about reclaiming the narrative, telling their own stories, and not feeding into tropes. These are stories about everyday people and it shows that the black community is not a monolith. It’s made up of incredible stories of heritage, of culture, of food of dance.”

Lloyd the Instructor follows a first generation Jamaican driving instructor

Gee’s film Dancing on Road, documents and celebrates the black British female roller-skating community, while Olusanya’ Mandem is “a poetic documentary that explores the deeper meaning of ‘mandem’ beyond its stereotypes”, and Atkinson-Johnson’s Lloyd the Instructor, is about a father whose is a first generation Jamaican and driving instructor.

Sobol says that while each of the filmmakers were at different levels of experience in filmmaking when they entered the process, their BBU short marks a directorial debut for each one of them. “They’ve done everything from create their vision, to direct it, to edit it. They’re all very promising,” she comments.

Though the BBU programme existed before Sobol joined WBD, it is a programme that is very close to her heart, not least because under her leadership a new ‘pipeline’ for the programme has emerged in a completely different part of the world to the UK.

“We’ve taken it to Brazil, which is really interesting and has been such a moment of pride for me to see,” says Sobol who oversees the EMEA, Apac and Lat Am regions, as part of her remit.

“Not every [model] will translate, but in Brazil, there’s an even bigger challenge with the black community working in film – something like 68% of the Brazilian population is black and only 3% work in film and TV. So, when we talked to them about Black Britain Unspoken, the response was that this is something that we really need here. So, they have put all their weight behind it, a lot of resource time from executives, and they ‘ve just finished production on their first batch of Black Brazil Unspoken films, which will be launching in November. And I’ve just seen the first cuts of them they’re beautiful.”

BBU came out of a ‘passion project’ within the WBD to hear more black British stories following the murder of George Floyd in the US, but other WBD Access programmes have launched out of different needs recognised by the industry.

An example of this is the recently launched WBD Access X Waterloo Road Directors Programme designed to encourage and support the pool of women directors in the North of England. In this case, Wall To Wall North, the production company alongside Rope Ladder Fiction making Waterloo Road, the BBC drama series set in a secondary school in the North of England, approached WBD Access to help find new directing talent for the show.

Sobol says the conversation to “open up” the directing talent already working on Waterloo Road was driven by the BBC asking its production companies to commit to a 50/50 pledge in terms of gender diversity in their senior creative teams. “We really have an opportunity here to find new talent for the show,” says Sobol about the programme.

Others, such as the WBD Access Unlock Unscripted Programme, which launched last year, have a global reach. In this case, the aim is to identify high-performing, mid-level unscripted producers who have had barriers getting to the next level or gaining exposure in different genres of reality. According to WBD, the 2024 cohort tripled in size from last year, with participants joining from the US, Canada, the UK, as well as Apac.

But with the industry in crisis, is Sobol concerned about the opportunities for underrepresented talent not just entering, but remaining within it?

“Everybody’s worried about how the industry has affected people wanting to leave and people having to leave. But my approach has always been to make sure that we keep in touch with our talent, that we continue to support them in ways that we can. People that have gone through our Black Britain Unspoken programme, we continue to promote their films, we invite them in to do talks, which we pay them for, we try and support them at film festivals and, when the time is right and when they need to have introductions, then we will help enable that. But I’m not a commissioner. That’s not my job. What I can do in my role is make sure that we don’t forget about the people that we’ve worked with in the past, and I think because of the numbers that we’re working with we’ve been quite good at that.”