Director Biography – Hayley Thom (TONY MCCLEAN NEPAL TRUST)

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True woman of the world, multi-disciplined director Hayley Thom has seen her fair share of the globe. She’s traversed the humanitarian and corporate sectors, from spanning New Zealand’s length to shooting in Buenos Aires, Shanghai, India, Nepal, South Africa and Bangladesh.
Hayley is passionate about being able to tell stories on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves. She has found herself in a prison yard in South Africa, deep in the slums in Mumbai and sat in woman’s empowerment groups in the Philippines. Hayley has also spent a lot of time on the road filming chefs, for a series of cookbooks throughout NZ and Australia.
Hayley is always up for a challenge and gets excited about new projects that can have a lasting impact.

 

Director Statement

I love meeting new people and to be able to have the chance to tell their stories. It was an honour to be involved in the ‘Tony McClean Nepal Trust’ film, to be part of such an incredible story. I wanted the viewer to feel connected to the story, for them to see that they can also be part of it and be able to make a real difference.

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By femalefilmfestival

The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes. Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival. This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way. When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival. A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a "HE" character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.

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