Paul Hamann is the Creative Director and MD of Wild Pictures.
Paul has overseen the creation and production of all of Wild’s ambitious and diverse documentaries; one-offs ranging from an exclusive look inside the Kremlin, Putin’s Palace and the multi award winning film, Execution of a Teenage Girl, to In Charlie Chaplin’s Footsteps with the late, imitable Terry Jones. Paul’s many prime time series include In the Line of Fire, Fraud Squad, Baby Hospital, Holloway, Wormwood Scrubs, Strangeways, Her Majesty’s Prison: Aylesbury, and recently 3 acclaimed Miriam Margolyes series for the BBC – Miriam’s Big American Adventure, Miriam’s Dead Good Adventure and Miriam’s Big Fat Adventure.
Wild has just completed C4’s acclaimed prime-time series: My Grandparents’ War with Helena Bonham Carter, Kristen Scott Thomas, Mark Rylance and Carey Mulligan and is currently into production on a second series, several other documentary series and singles, as well as its first feature film in development.
Prior to starting Wild, Paul was the Creative Director at Shine Limited, where he built a large factual department with a wide range of commissions including an 8-part ITV series inside the MET’s Murder Squad, a series inside Royal Navy’s flagship HMS Ark Royal during the Gulf conflict, MacIntyre’s Millions, Warrior School, Snatched, A Tale of Two Alis for C4’s Cutting Edge, the multi award-winning The Day I’ll Never Forget about the barbaric practice of female circumcision, The Death Belt about racism and the death penalty system in the Southern States of the U.S.A, the award winning film My Shakespeare with Baz Luhrmann for C4 and Shine’s acclaimed first feature film Bullet Boy for BBC Films and The Film Council, which premiered at the London Film Festival.
As the former Head of BBC Documentaries & History, Paul was responsible for over 200 hours of innovative television for BBC1 and 2 annually, including: Inside Story, Airport, Children’s Hospital, Reputations, Timewatch, Rough Justice, Simon Schama’s History of Britain, Inside the Royal Opera House and several series inside Whitehall Ministries as well as Michael Palin’s various travel journeys. Under Paul’s leadership, the department trebled its output and won more awards than any other area of British television.
Paul has received many awards for work he both devised and directed, including a BAFTA for ‘Best Documentary Series’ for The Duty Men, about British undercover drug agents (he also authored the accompanying bestselling book). Paul was awarded the BFI’s prestigious Grierson Award, as well five further international awards, for Fourteen Days in May, the landmark feature documentary on the execution of an innocent young black man in Mississippi, who was sent to the gas chamber.
The Observer voted him the ‘Documentary Maker’s Documentary Maker.’