The idea
The international film industry runs on access. Access to the right rooms, the right festivals, the right introductions. For those who can afford film school, a Cannes badge, or a place on a competitive residency, those doors open. For the vast majority of early-career makers and producers — talented, ambitious, ready — they stay shut.
Film Table exists because that shouldn’t be the case.
The idea is simple: what if you could sit down with experienced filmmakers, producers, and industry figures from all over the world and just ask them anything? No festival pass required. No alumni network to lean on. No expensive short course. Just a seat at the table.
A global film career shouldn’t depend on how much you can spend to access it.
About Joanna Duncombe, founder
Joanna Duncombe has spent over a decade working at the intersection of international film, talent development, and cultural diplomacy. As Senior Consultant and Head of New Talent Programmes at British Council Film, she has represented the UK at Cannes, Berlinale, and Rotterdam, built global travel grant systems for emerging filmmakers, and overseen programmes with a combined portfolio in the millions.
She has worked with the BFI, the National Film and Television School, the London Film Academy, and Birds Eye View, and has served as a jury member, mentor, moderator, and programme director across the independent film world. One of forty practitioners globally selected for the EU’s Global Cultural Relations Programme, she understands — from the inside — how international film networks are built, who gets access to them, and who doesn’t.
Film Table grew out of a frustration and a conviction: that the knowledge, connections, and opportunity currently concentrated inside expensive institutions and elite festival circuits should be available to any filmmaker with the drive to pursue an international career.
She splits her time between London and Marseille.