Vanessa Berlowitz

About

Vanessa Berlowitz

Vanessa Berlowitz is a multi-award-winning (BAFTA and Emmy) Producer and Director of over 20 wildlife and human documentaries across multiple major landmark series for the BBC Natural History Unit.

Vanessa Berlowitz co-founded Wildstar Films in 2018, a Bristol based independent television company, with her husband, Mark Linfield, after nearly 30 years of directing and producing multi award winning wildlife films. They currently have 2 landmark wildlife series, ‘America’ and ‘Queens’ as well as a shark series in production for National Geographic Channel as well as a major presenter-led wildlife series for Disneyplus. She is also co-producing the next Disneynature film and environmental companion documentary with Mark.

Vanessa started her career at the BBC Natural History Unit, where she worked for 24 years and made over 15 films for 5 internationally acclaimed, multi-award winning, landmark series – Planet Eartha, Frozen Planet, Life of Mammals, Land of the Tiger and the Human Animal – as well as for major long-running strands and series such as The Natural World, Wildlife on One, Animal People and Postcards from the Country. The films she has worked on with her teams have been highly awarded by EMMY, BAFTA, RTS, Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, Missoula International Wildlife Festival and Wildscreen. She is an EMMY nominated writer and a BAFTA and Grierson nominated Director. She won a Primetime EMMY as the Series Producer of Frozen Planet and then went on to become a lead Executive Producer for the BBC, developing and winning Great Bear Stakeout, Life in the Air and Planet Earth 2.

After Vanessa left the BBC, she worked as a Consulting Executive Producer with Nutopia and helped develop the series vision for One Strange Rock.

She then teamed up again with her husband, Mark, who she met at Oxford University when studying for her MA in Human Sciences. They moved with their son to Botswana to live in the bush for 2 years while making Disneynature’s ‘Elephant’ film and environmental companion documentary, ‘In the Footsteps of Disneyanture’s ‘Elephant’.

A published author of books and journals, Vanessa is also an experienced speaker to international audiences on Creativity in the Media, Technology in Film-making, Her Work on David Attenborough’s series, Challenges of Working in Extreme Location, Importance of Diversity in Media, Women in Media/Business and Diversity at work – something Vanessa is passionate about.