Saatchi & Saatchi Reveals The 2026 New Creators’ Showcase

Celebrating the very best in creativity, storytelling and visual innovation and debuting in London for the first time in its 36-year history as part of a new partnership with SXSW London, Saatchi and Saatchi has unveiled the line-up of global talent selected for its 2026 New Creators Showcase.

The showcase was presented in Shoreditch, a place close to the heart of chief creative officer Franki Goodwin, who led the evening with Emmy-nominated photographer, director and artist Bafic, joining her on stage to discuss how creative boundaries have dissolved and how maker-ship, movies, music and marketing are being blended in new ways.

Reflecting on her own polymath career and how London is the centre of ambitious emerging talent, Goodwin highlighted how being at SXSW London was the perfect place for the Showcase to be. Goodwin said “I think more than ever we need to be showing up for emerging talent. With all the exciting conversations around AI and the tools it’s going to bring, we need to offer the same opportunities I had when I first came to London to the next generation within the context of what's happening in the future”.

Bafic discussed how London, as well as across the UK, brings some of the best creators to the world and how being in the right place at the right time was hugely significant to the trajectory of his creative career.

He also reflected on what art moved him whilst growing up, and said “Always be suspicious of artists, because they come with me with people from all walks of life, and I think that's part of being able to learn about things from different environments and different people that transfer information and work that we make.”

Cecilia Morelli, CMO at SXSW London said: “Our ambition for SXSW London is to create a space where creativity, technology and business can converge and inspire. The 2026 New Creators’ Showcase is truly representative of that spirit: the Showcase facilitates commercial discovery, not just by spotlighting talent but also by spring-boarding the networks in which meaningful creativity happens. We’re excited to see what grows from here and to welcoming NCS back in 2027.”

Beyond having their work showcased at SXSW London, each of the shortlisted creators will be invited to pitch for and collaborate on work across Saatchi & Saatchi’s network portfolio in the next 12 months, and will also have access to hands-on assistance from production teams through expert guidance and insight.

This year’s Showcase includes work from a broad range of disciplines, regions and creators, featuring 11 pieces of short film, commercial, stop motion animation and music video content. Let's take a look.

Alfie Whiteman - Toe Wrestle (Vibram)

Director and photographer Alfie Whiteman’s work is defined by a curiosity for how culture, identity and community intersect. A former professional footballer with Tottenham Hotspur, Whiteman channels the discipline of elite sport into the openness of his creative practice.

With an eye attuned to capturing moments of human connection in unseen places, his video portfolio includes a cinematic observation on the World Toe Wrestling Championship for footwear brand Vibram FiveFingers. Most recently, he offered his talents to brand Baracuta in ‘Keep The Faith’, a movement-driven short shining a spotlight (torch) on the Northern Soul community.

Whiteman has shot for brands including On and Paloma Wool, and parallel to his moving image and photography work, is a resident DJ on NTS Radio with a monthly show, ‘Sweet Tooth’.

Cass Virdee - Fight or Flight

Cass Virdee is an award-winning writer-director driven to create bold, emotionally resonant stories that explore the journey toward empowerment. A recent graduate of the Directing Fiction MFA at the National Film and Television School, her work has screened at the BFI London Film Festival, Iris Prize, and Palm Springs ShortFest, and has been broadcast on Film4.

In 2025, she received a Shiny Award for Fight or Flight and received the Directors’ UK Best Director Award. Virdee is currently developing her debut feature with Dorothy Street Pictures, a daring, high-concept project that reflects her ambition for scale and spectacle. She is also developing a Brazilian feature 'Señorita' with Nina Pictures, following a young mother who is unjustly incarcerated.

Frances O’Sullivan - Screen Test

Frances O’Sullivan is a multi-hyphenate director, visual artist, photographer, makeup artist, and model whose work blurs boundaries between disciplines. Bringing together direction, performance, makeup,and photography, O’Sullivan has cultivated a distinct visual language that merges glamour with the grotesque, surrealism with pop culture, and nostalgia with contemporary edge.

Drawing inspiration from the mid-to-late 20th century, O’Sullivan’s hybrid of high glamour and horror is shaped by a fascination with the macabre, uncanny, and grotesque. Her work subverts traditional notions of femininity through provocative, vibrant, and often haunting visuals, and has received critical acclaim, with coverage in multiple publications, including Tatler and Dazed.

Iris Kim - Issy

Based in Los Angeles, by way of deepest Canada, Kim left behind her quiet early life in sleepy suburbia to get lost in fantasies about the elaborate lives of people elsewhere.

Her work is sharp, colourful, and show-stopping, but also sensitive and observant. She often explores themes that hinge on nostalgia and familiar people and places - whether real or imagined.

Rooted in small-town observation scaled up for screens of all sizes, her body of work blends style, humor, nuance, and evocative editorial moments that make every project shimmer with life and personality, and boast collaborators such as Troye Sivan, Madison Beer, Helen Mirren, Julia Michaels, Heidi Montag, and brands like MAC Cosmetics, L’Oréal Paris, Adidas, and Nike.

Jasmina Wood - Dinner Date

Jasmina Wood is a Czech-Iraqi writer, director, and producer from London, with a background in photography. Her work explores class, beauty, identity, and modern ambition through a distinctly British lens, blending stylised realism with humour and emotional intimacy to create cinematic stories rooted in youth culture, social observation, and the tension between glamour, power, and vulnerability.

Leve Kühl - Peas (Grindr)

Leve Kühl is a Berlin-based director working across both fiction and commercial formats, guided by a strong sense of emotion and human connection. Before studying directing at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, he worked as an editor in San Francisco. After three years abroad, Kühl returned to Germany with a clear focus: pairing cinematic imagery with emotional honesty.

Lisa Mausbach - Sorry (Fleurop)

Lisa Mausbach's work lives somewhere between opposites: bold yet sensitive, playful yet precise. With a background in media design and photography, she directs commercials and music videos, always chasing the unexpected and finding beauty in imperfections, contrasts, and those quiet little contradictions. Her films have a strong visual instinct and a curiosity for moments that feel slightly off, yet deeply human. She builds worlds that surprise you and invite you to look twice.

Lucy Knox - Opal Fever

Lucy Knox is an Australian writer and director working across narrative film, documentary and commercial work. Her films focus on human behaviour within heightened, textured worlds, drawing tension and humour from precise visual storytelling and intimate performances.

Her debut short, An Act of Love, won Best Direction in a Student Film at the Australian Directors’ Guild Awards, received the Mona Brand Emerging Writer’s Award, and screened at more than 30 festivals before being acquired by The Criterion Collection. Her documentary Last Man Standing screened at MoMA New York and Sheffield DocFest, and her most recent narrative short, Hot Mother, has premiered at the Berlinale with a Crystal Bear nomination.

Melissa Mark - Mummy Issues

An emerging creator who describes herself as “telling big stories with tiny puppets,” Melissa Marks is a student at the renowned Aardman College in Bristol. Specialising in stop motion, documentaries and comedy, Mummy Issues is an intelligent, tongue in cheek take on motherhood, and the teething problems that come with toddlers. Injecting emotion, humour and truth into her work, Mummy Issues has already been nominated for a Best Animation, Will Vinton Award at the McMinnville Short Film Festival and is an Official Selection at the Barciff Barcelona Indie Filmmaker's Festival.

Sebastian Lopez - THAT’S AI - FERN

Sebastian Lopez makes work that feels alive in the moment. His films move with a natural rhythm, driven as much by performance as by edit, where overlapping dialogue, small gestures, and unscripted energy give each scene its texture. 

Drawing from meme culture, early sports advertising, and the chaos of everyday life, he leans into rawness over polish, building character-led worlds that feel immediate, funny, and sharply observed. Whether in short-form sketches or commercial work, there’s a looseness to his direction that allows people to interrupt, react, and exist on screen in a way that feels unforced.

After starting out shooting sketches on his mom’s iPhone and later working in advertising, Lopez returned to filmmaking with a renewed focus, with a breakout collaboration with Globe Studios, campaigns for Red Bull and Veo, and a self-written short That’s AI, which explores the overlap between humor and contemporary culture.

Werner Vivier - JL-AL

Werner Vivier is a South African-Swiss filmmaker based in London. A BIFA-longlisted director, he works across fashion, commercial and narrative projects. His work has earned him recognition at Cannes YDA, Shots, Ciclope, 1.4 Awards and BAFTA Rocliffe.