About Us

Innovative and groundbreaking, New Black Films is one of the world’s premium sports theatrical producers and has extensive experience in bringing sporting stories to the big screen. Based in London, England, the company was founded by filmmakers James Erskine and Victoria Gregory in 2009, and joined in 2015 by Alex Holmes.

The Team

The People of NBF

JAMES ERSKINE

James is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker whose work as a writer/director/producer includes, in addition to his New Black Films projects, ‘Vanishing of the Bees’; ‘Oil Storm’, an award-winning TV movie for FX; and ‘EMR’, a theatrically released independent feature, and winner at several film festivals including Raindance. He has also directed several episodes of popular BBC dramas ‘Robin Hood’, ‘Torchwood’, ‘Holby City’ and ‘EastEnders’, among others. James recently directed ‘The Ice King’, a documentary telling the story of John Curry, the Olympic gold medalist ice skater who challenged norms in both art and sexuality. The film was released to critical acclaim in the UK earlier this year and has gone on to be sold around the world. Alongside developing New Black Films’ current projects, James has just directed ‘Billie’, a portrait of the greatest jazz singer of all time, Billie Holiday.

VICTORIA GREGORY

Victoria’s last theatrical documentary project before co-founding New Black Films was with Working Title Films on the BAFTA award-winning ‘Senna’, having previously co-produced the Oscar-winning ‘Man on Wire’. A career at the BBC in production management included among others: BAFTA-winning ‘The Secret Policeman’, factual drama series ‘Space Race’ and ‘Dunkirk’, prior to which Victoria had also worked on the award winning feature film ‘Last Resort’. Alongside producing across New Black Films’ projects including ‘Pantani’, ‘Battle of The Sexes’, ‘The Ice King’, and ‘Maiden’, Victoria has carved herself a niche maximising the value of documentary and drama-documentary features.

ALEX HOLMES

Alex is a Bafta-winning filmmaker with extensive experience in producing, directing, and writing acclaimed documentaries and dramas. His work as a writer-director includes searing documentary ‘Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story’ for BBC’s Storyville, which Variety magazine described as “riveting… devastating… thought-provoking”, as well as Emmy, Bafta and RTS-winning factually-based dramas ‘House of Saddam’, ‘Dunkirk’ and ‘Coalition‘. Last year Alex directed the horror influenced revenge drama ‘Paula‘ for BBC 2 which the Telegraph called “Harrowing, brilliant and superbly directed”. Alex most recently directed the theatrical documentary ‘Maiden’, premiering at TIFF 2018, this film tells the epic story of Tracy Edwards who, through sheer grit and determination, successfully skippered the first ever all-female crew in the Whitbread round the world yacht race.

SAM BRAYSHAW

A key member of the team at New Black Films since 2016 Sam has a background in both documentary and drama, working as an assistant on various shows including the feature film ‘Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story’, Channel 4’s RTS winning political drama ‘Coalition’ and BBC 2’s ‘Paula’ in 2017. More recently Sam Associate Produced on Channel 4’s thrilling documentary ‘Hunting the KGB Killers’ and ‘Maiden’.