Spotlight: Creative Collaboration in Comedy with the Filmmakers from THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND

Tom Basden is an award-winning writer and actor having performed and written extensively for comedy shows on the BBC, Netflix and Channel 4. Tom co-created and stars in Plebs, ITV2’s longest running sitcom. Plebs won Best New Comedy Programme at the 2013 British Comedy Awards, where Tom was also nominated for Best Comedy Breakthrough Artist, and the show’s third series received a nomination for Best TV Situation Comedy at the Writer's Guild Awards. He also created and starred in three series of Here We Go for the BBC.

He plays 'Matt' in the popular Netflix series After Life with Ricky Gervais, and 'John' in Quacks for BBC2. Tom formed the comedy sketch group Cowards, along with three of his contemporaries from the Cambridge Footlights, which went on to have its own series on BBC 4. He continues to perform with fellow comedian Tim Key as double act Freeze and has featured on Radio 4’s Tim Key's Late Night Poetry. Tom has also appeared in The Windsors as Jeremy Corbyn, W1A, The Wrong Mans and the feature film David Brent - Life on the Road.

James Griffith is a BAFTA-nominated British television and film director and producer. James has quickly established himself as one of the most prolific & successful pilot directors in television today, having in just a few years put 9 of 11 pilots that he's directed and executive produced on the air in the United States, spanning comedy & drama for both broadcast & cable, A Million Little Things, Black-ish and its FreeForm-based spinoff Grown-ish, Disney+’s The Mighty Ducks, (a series based on the beloved hit film franchise) and ABC’s Stumptown starring Cobie Smulders.

Griffiths also executive produced ABC's The Mayor and directed the pilots for Fox's Justin Bartha-starring Cooper-Barret's Guide to Surviving Life & NBC's Up All Night for Lorne Michaels, starring Will Arnett, Christina Applegate, and Maya Rudolph. All this came after James, who got his start in music videos, made a name for himself in the UK by directing every episode of the Big Talk cult series Free Agents starring Sharon Horgan as well as the entire first season of Episodes for Showtime/BBC starring Matt LeBlanc, for which Matt won a Golden Globe.

On the heels of those successes, James directed his first feature film Cuban Fury, produced by Big Talk and stars Nick Frost, Rashida Jones and Chris O'Dowd, debuting to rave reviews internationally. Recently, he directed The Ballad of Wallace Island (Focus Features, Bankside, Baby Cow), a feature based on his Bafta-winning short, to premiere in 2025 and stars Tim Key, Tom Basden, and Carey Mulligan. He also directed the final episodes for season 2 of Bad Sisters (Apple, Merman) and continues to develop projects through his company Fee Fi Fo Films.

Tim Key is a comedian, poet, actor, and writer. At the start of his career, Key won the 2009 Perrier Award and has since gone on to write and perform eight solo shows, the most recent of which, Mulberry, was described by The Times of London as “the greatest stand-up response to lockdown” with more than 150 shows performed in 2022 and 2023.

On screen, he is best known as Sidekick Simon in This Time with Alan Partridge and his leading role with Daisy May Cooper in The Witchfinder, as well as The Double, Inside No. 9, Peep Show, Pls Like, Greed and The End of the F***ing World. Most recently, he played Commissioner Harrold Scott alongside Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan in See How They Run. In addition to The Ballad of Wallis Island, Key will next be seen on the big screen opposite Robert Pattinson in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17.

On stage, he co-starred with Daniel Kitson in Tree at the Old Vic where he also played Yvan in Art with Rufus Sewell and Paul Ritter; his radio series Late Night Poetry with Tim Key has just been commissioned for a sixth season. Key also has written several successful poetry anthologies, including Chapters, He Used Thought As A Wife, and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.

Erica Elson is a Producer, Writer and Educator based in the mountains outside Los Angeles. Her short film, WING NIGHT, premiered at Method Fest in Los Angeles. She is the co-author of the book THE AWKWARD HUMAN SURVIVAL GUIDE and co-hosted a podcast by the same name on the 5by5 network for five years. Elson's articles have been published by HuffPost, Lifehacker, and Reader's Digest. Prior to working in education, she worked in television development and writers’ rooms such as VH1’s HINDSIGHT, where she had the chance to write for the spinoff web series PLANET SEBASTIAN.

Elson joined the Sundance Collab team in October 2021 and produces courses, Master Classes, and events in the areas of screenwriting, television writing, directing, producing, and documentary filmmaking. She has moderated conversations with Sofia Coppola, Richard Linklater, Alexander Payne, and Susannah Grant, among others.

Prior to Sundance, Elson was the Thesis Production Supervisor at the American Film Institute for five years. She oversaw several award-winning graduate thesis films, notably the 2021 BAFTA student film winner APART, TOGETHER and the 2023 Sundance Film Festival short WE WERE MEANT TO. While at AFI, Elson developed a passion for sustainable production and created the Green Film School Alliance, which includes forty schools on four continents. She holds a BA in Communication and Film Studies from Concordia University and an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute.