The Team
Kasimir Burgess
Director & Writer
Kasimir’s debut feature film Fell had its world premiere in Official Competition at Sydney International Film Festival and garnered critical acclaim from publications including the Hollywood Reporter and Screen Daily. His shorts have screened in over thirty countries at festivals including Berlin, Locarno, Stockholm and Melbourne International. His most recent feature documentary, The Leunig Fragments, screened in competition at both the 2019 Sydney and Melbourne International Film Festivals and was released in cinemas nationwide in 2020 and followed by high ratings on the ABC.
Oliver Cassidy
Principal cast and Co-Producer
Oliver is an 8th-generation Tasmanian, activist, filmmaker, musician and transgender person. Oliver began researching the story of the Franklin campaign after the early passing of his father Mike, who in 1983 rafted the river to join the blockade and was arrested the week before Oliver was born.
Oliver freelanced in film and TV production in Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Melbourne before Franklin drew him back to Tasmania, where he took up a thematically related job at the Tasmanian Conservation Trust.
Chris Kamen
Producer
With over 20 years in the film industry, Chris has a broad business, legal and creative skillset spanning film and TV production, distribution and marketing. Franklin represents the pinnacle of Chris' filmmaking career to date. Whilst he has produced a lot of short form content and low budget documentaries, Franklin is the most ambitious project he has attempted. It has been a labour of love for seven years and Chris is now eager to share it - and the environmental messages it contains - with the world.
Claire Smith
Writer
Claire is a documentary director, writer and producer specialising in films about human and planetary health. Over the last ten years she has made documentaries for Netflix, BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, ABC, SBS and Discovery. She began working on Franklin in 2017 and spent many months of lockdown writing for us in her hometown of London. Since then, she has written and directed the feature-length documentary The Deepwater Disaster about the deadly BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. She produced Channel 4’s Australia on Fire about the 2020 bushfires, ABC's Ask the Doctor and Catalyst, and directed several true crime documentaries for US networks. In her spare time she makes short films for environmental charities including global literary initiative Letters to the Earth.
Natasha Pincus
Writer
Natasha has written more than 20 feature film and TV scripts for projects in Australia and the US, including adapting the Pulitzer-nominated novel Snow Child for Tangerine Entertainment and co-writing The Twisted for Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions. Her screenplay Middle Of The Air was a winner of the UCLA Screenwriting Contest and her screenplay Clive was included on the US Hollywood Blacklist and was a Semi-Finalist of the Nicholl Fellowship. Natasha wrote the feature film Fell, directed by Kasimir Burgess, which premiered In Competition at the Sydney Film Festival.
ANNIE VENABLES
Line Producer
Annie has worked as a freelance producer, line-producer and production manager in the film and TV industry for 30 years, both in the UK and Australia. She has worked with some of Australia’s best production companies, filmed all over the world and across a range of formats: documentary, docu-drama, TV series and feature films.
Benjamin Bryan
Cinematographer - Visit Ben’s website
Ben is an up-and-coming cinematographer with over a decade of experience working behind the camera, assisting and learning from some of Australia’s most respected Directors of Photography. His other works include short documentary Home, which won a Gold ACS award and short film TREES which recently garnered the Spirit of the Civic award at NZIFF. Ben loves a challenge and was humbled to have the opportunity to work on Franklin as his father was coincidentally one of the protestors who got arrested (on camera) during the blockade.
Johanna Scott
Editor - IMDB
Jo has established a reputation as one of the leading commercials editors in Australia, working with directors such as Garth Davis, Patrick Hughes and Justin Kurzel, among others. Consistently garnering international awards, Jo was recently recognised for her outstanding commercials work with the Shots “Editor of the Year” in 2021.
Her first feature documentary “Have You Seen The Listers,” for director Eddie Martin, gained her an AACTA nomination in 2018. In 2022 her editing accomplishments saw her nominated for the prestigious MIFF Innovation Award. It also saw the release of two of her latest feature documentaries, "Fire Front" with director Eddie Martin and “Franklin” with director Kasimir Burgess.
Luke Altmann
Composer - Visit Luke’s website
Luke first collaborated with FRANKLIN director Kasimir Burgess on his feature debut Fell in 2014, followed by The Leunig Fragments for which he was nominated for AACTA and APRA AMCOS awards in 2019.
Luke’s ambitious score for Franklin was several years in the making. A big team of outstanding musical collaborators joined the cause to make it possible, including the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra who recorded Luke’s Irenabyss for the occasion. An album of Luke's score for FRANKLIN has been released internationally through De la Catessen Records (buy it here).