S.O.U.L. Cast

Adjani Salmon grew up in Jamaica making kung-fu films at lunchtime and studying architecture, with no route into the industry and no mentors. He ended up as the creator, writer and star of Dreaming Whilst Black — a BBC series picked up by A24 and Showtime, with RTS and BAFTA recognition off the back of a single pilot episode.In this episode he takes Iyare Igiehon through exactly how that happened, and he doesn't skip the unglamorous parts: the Smirnoff ad he took after his only camera-operator left the country; the reality TV edit suite where he actually learned story; the Malcolm Gladwell "big fish, small pond" theory that made him choose Britain over America; the web series that took two years, cost him his own money and pulled 10,000 views; the agent he got through a chain of three strangers at a 50-person screening; the seventh draft the BBC saw as "draft one," and the 22nd they saw as "draft two"; and the day he bet a production company £50,000 he didn't have that they needed one more shooting day.He's also candid about the parts of the story that were timing rather than talent, about why he refuses to rank how anyone earns a living making films, and about what he's building next now that he considers comedy-drama a solved problem.Adjani first screened Dreaming Whilst Black at S.O.U.L. Fest, before the industry was paying attention. This conversation closes that loop.

Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor is a producer, writer and director whose work spans film and TV with a clear, unwavering focus on Black, queer and female-led stories. She founded Joi Productions in 2016 and hasn't looked back since — producing the breakout hit Blue Story (2019), Boxing Day (the UK's first all-Black Christmas film), Champion for BBC and Netflix, and most recently Animal, Ashley Walters' directorial debut which picked up the Best Debut Feature award at Berlinale 2025.Iyare sat down with Joy to talk about how she fell into producing from a betting shop in Hackney, why she was the perfect person to protect Rap Man's voice on Blue Story, the chaos and magic of that opening weekend, what it actually takes to build a sustainable production company in one of the hardest periods in British film history — and why, for Joy, a no is never a no until it's a no.They also get into Champion, the campaign for a second series, Animal, her directorial debut Dreamers, and what collective power in the British film industry could actually look like.Watch DreamersSubscribe to the SOUL Cast wherever you get your podcasts.Find out more about S.O.U.L. FestSOUL Cast is edited by Nuru MkaliRecorded at Run VTMusic By Christian JermaneWith thanks to Mariam Adamson#SOULCast #JoyGharoroAkpojotor #BlackBritishFilm #Dreamers #BlueStory #SOULFest #BritishCinema #FilmPodcast #BlackFilmmakers #WomenInFilm

Joan Iyiola has spent her career refusing to stay in one lane — and it's working.She began at Cambridge, studying law under a supervisor who used to perform alongside Derek Jacobi, before making the slow, careful pivot to acting her Nigerian parents had long suspected was coming. After years of fringe theatre, tutoring, temp work and a brief, chaotic stint at cold calling (done alongside Josh O'Connor, mostly as an excuse to practice accents), Joan secured a place at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School — and never looked back.Her theatre career took her to the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she became the first Black woman to lead a show. But it was a different kind of milestone — three consecutive auditions in a single week, all of which told her she "wasn't fragile enough" — that would change her direction entirely.Rather than collapse, Joan channelled the rejection into creation. She had already spent a decade co-running The Mono Box with movement director Polly Bennett — a resource organisation that grew from a handful of donated plays to nearly five thousand, running workshops from Bermondsey to the Hampstead Theatre. That experience had quietly made her a producer. All she needed now was a film.Delapo Is Fine was first. Made on a shoestring, it won the HBO Short Film Award at ABFF, went to Netflix and then Disney+, and — after being submitted to SoulFest — became a catalyst. Joan walked away from that festival experience with a new resolve: she would direct the next one herself.That film was Mango — an 11-minute, visually intense short about fibroids, shot while her son had just turned one and the whole household had been through a nursery bug. It won Best Film, Best Actress (Olivia Nkuintu) and Best Craft (cinematographer Yinka Edward) at SoulFest 2025. It was the festival's UK premiere. Within months it was on Disney+, and is now also being used in hospital training programmes.Joan talks about all of it in S.O.U.L. Cast's very first episode — the Nigerian parent psychology, the dark nights of the soul, the difference between getting rejected and getting rejected in a way you can't do anything with, what motherhood actually taught her about directing, and why she believes "short is king" right now for Black British filmmakers with something to say.You can watch Joan’s directorial debut ‘Mango’ on Disney+SOUL Cast is edited by Nuru MkaliRecorded at Run VTMusic By Christian JermaneWith thanks to Janine Kempadoo and Mariam Adamson