Phil Grabsky (United Kingdom)

Phil Grabsky is an award-winning documentary film-maker. With a film career spanning 20 years, Phil and his company Seventh Art Productions make films for cinema and television.

Phil's cinema films include The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan, which has played worldwide and, to date, has won thirteen awards, including first prize at Valladolid International Film Festival, and the Gold Hugo in Chicago for Best Film, Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Phil is continuing to film in Afghanistan and will release the follow up film The Boy Mir in 2011.

In early 2006 Phil completed the first ever feature-length documentary on the life of Mozart, In Search of Mozart, which contains performances and interviews with dozens of today's finest performers. It premiered to over 1000 people at London's Barbican concert hall, and has now been broadcast across the world, as well as gaining cinema distribution. In Australian cinemas, within weeks, it entered the all-time top grossing documentaries. More recently, working with co-director David Bickerstaff, he has also completed Heavy Water: a Film for Chernobyl, which uses Mario Petrucci's poetry to explore the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The film recently won the Best Short Documentary at the Cinequest International Film Festival. Phil recently completed his latest film Escape from Luanda which followed Angola's only music school over the course of a year. Last year he finished production of In Search of Beethoven - the eagerly awaited major cinema film on the life of Beethoven.

Phil's TV films include one-offs for BBC strands Timewatch and Reputations as well as major series such as Channel 4's Spain - in the Shadow of the Sun and The Great Commanders, BBC's I Caesar and Five & Sky Arts's Tim Marlow arts strand. Phil has also made six award-winning history films with Monty Python's Terry Jones. Phil has also written four history books and is regularly involved as a judge for the Emmys, Bafta, RTS and One World awards.