Feeling The Love: DocHearts’ Andy Mundy-Castle Makes Drama Directing Debut With Notting Hill Carnival Romcom And Readies Grenfell Tower Project & Doc With Steve McQueen’s Lammas Park

EXCLUSIVE: When Andy Mundy-Castle took to the stage at the 2024 BAFTA Television Awards to collect his trophy for winning the Best Specialist Factual category for Channel 5 doc White Nanny, Black Child, he delivered one of that night’s most unexpectedly memorable speeches.

His voice cracked with emotion as he told an enraptured audience his story: “I come from a council estate in Brixton and this place has been a tough, tough challenge for me to consistently prevail in, and it means a lot. I watched this show for many years as a teenager and I dreamt of being on this stage.”

Spontaneous applause broke out before he added, “I’d just like to say to everybody watching at home who may come from the same background as me: Keep on dreaming, keep on working, get into good trouble.”

In an interview with Deadline, he recalls the evening: “It happened at a time when the industry was doing a full 360 on itself. A moment like that was necessary and needed, and many of my peers, especially peers of color, said how inspiring it was at a time when so many were on the cusp of walking out of the industry. For me, it wasn’t the finish line and just a marker in my journey.”

Mundy-Castle would go on to be named Mentor of the Year at the 2025 New Voice Awards of the Edinburgh TV Festival’s charity, The TV Foundation, cementing his status as one of the most influential role models in the UK unscripted game. The producer is also among the most active independent filmmakers currently working and following his BAFTA win, he was signed to United Artists at the end of 2024, providing more potential routes forward.

Today, we can reveal several new projects, including his first scripted feature directing gig, a project with two of the most important Grenfell Tower disaster filmmakers, an unscripted film with Steve McQueen‘s Lammas Park that’s fronted by a major acting star and a limited series with Roger Ross Williams about Fela Kuti that we revealed last week. He’s also working on a slate of projects with Misan Harriman, the photographer and doc maker with whom Mundy-Castle made global protests doc Misan Harriman: Shoot the People, which debuted at SXSW London in June.

Born and raised in South London, it’s no surprise Mundy-Castle’s slate has the UK’s capital at heart. The first project, One Summer Love, is a romcom feature set and filmed in the heart of the Notting Hill Carnival. It will shoot this August and follows two people who hit a crossroads in their lives, only to find each other in the middle of the biggest street party in Europe.

The project marks DocHearts‘ first scripted series and Mundy-Castle’s first drama directing role. Supacell producer Sheila Nortley and Enrico Tessarin are on board. We understand casting is complete, with details following at a later date.

“I’m trying to bring doc sensibilities to a love story set to the backdrop of Notting Hill,” says Mundy-Castle. “How do you bring actors into an improvised scenario, or a real one? Can you strip back the drama of drama and give it some factual foundations?” he adds of the concept.

“Drama producers aren’t sure we’re going to pull this off, but I’ve shot at Carnival three or four times. It’s something I lean into – finding the magic in the moment. You have to respect the framework of drama, but you can’t recreate the different textures and flavors of 800,000 people in one area unless it’s documentary.”

Mundy-Castle notes he and Harriman shot variously at protests of hundreds of thousands of people around the world for Shoot the People. “Finding the story there is what we get off on as factual storytellers,” he says. “You lean into the uncertainty.”

Also in Notting Hill, DocHearts has just boarded a Grenfell Tower project with local filmmakers Wyn Baptiste, who works at Mundy-Castle’s company as an exec producer, and Dominic Asbridge ahead of the tragedy’s ten-year anniversary in 2027. The duo have been making the film for over eight years, and while the likes of Netflix and the BBC have taken deep dives into the tower block fire, Baptiste and Asbridge have focused on telling stories of resilience from the local community in and near the Latimer Road area where the burnt-out building remains to this day. Exec producers include James Gay Rees from Box to Box and Kate Buckley from 42MP.

Mundy-Castle is partnering with the production company of another London filmmaker, Small Axe and Shame director Steve McQueen, on a project about prostate cancer.

DocHearts and Lammas Park will work together on what’s being billed as a “crime medical documentary,” which has landed paid development from Prostate Cancer Research’s development fund. We understand Homeland, Supergirl and The Agency actor David Harewood is attached to front the project, though Mundy-Castle won’t confirm talent.

Other projects include the launch of a YouTube network that will house factual content for kids and adults. It’s being developed in consultation with Sam Barcroft, the founder and former CEO of digital channels business Barcroft Media, and will allow DocHearts to test formats at a relatively low cost. Mundy-Castle has also just take on a small 1,000sq ft studio in Imperial Wharf, near DocHearts’ base in Fulham, which will allow for faster turnaround productions.

All this sits alongside branded content work for the likes of the Tate Gallery and traditional commissions such as the BAFTA winner White Nanny, Black Child for 5, Charlene White: Empire’s Child for ITV and Netflix, and Reu & Harper’s Wonder World, which has run for two seasons on 5’s kids strand, Milkshake!.

For DocHearts, which was formed in 2016, this is part of a plan operate in “different lanes” and not become reliant on relationships with British commissioners. Given that storied companies such as RDF Media and 12 Yard Productions have closed in the past year amid a gruesome commissioning slowdown in unscripted, producers have been challenged to create diversified businesses.

“Overnights and ad revenue are still the life blood of the industry, but what does modern prodco look like?” says Mundy-Castle. “I wonder where the intersection is. What we’ve seen in the shift in priorities [at streamers and broadcasters] is you can’t be a one-lane company with great relationships with one channel.

“Major platforms, labels and studios are falling on a monthly basis, so what do we lean into? I would suggest nimble, smaller, more dynamic companies – both in broadcasting and the production side – feel like the cornerstone that can’t be ignored.”

Mundy-Castle says DocHearts, which is independently financed, has developed the ability to produce “low cost and high quality” programming and has always taken an entrepreneurial line – sometimes producing for little reward to build up a body of work or develop a relationship.

“DocHearts has constantly has to dig deep and forfeited profit to keep doing what we do,” he says. “I don’t understand how it is possible for the industry [to sustain] big companies with major overheads and big salaries that are only getting two things away a year.

“If you are a one-lane company, you do hit very harsh roads going for very small pockets of money that are increasingly hard to access. I’m thinking about building a studio for the world where audiences don’t live in genre silos.”

Taxing issues

With unscripted producers in the UK and beyond facing continued financial pressure, Mundy-Castle says his biggest achievement right now is “the fact I feel we will survive ’25,” remixing the much-quoted business ethos of the past 18 or so months. However, he says unscripted producers, especially in the doc space, need systems of support in place.

Just as digital creators and kids TV makers have done in recent months, he calls for government intervention to support doc making – especially in an era of deep mistrust in mainstream media outlets and news providers. “Truth is being questioned right now on a weekly basis,” he says. “Far too often we’ve been overlooked by drama in terms of tax rebates and relief. There has to be some form of reciprocity that is baked into the national strategy.”

Mundy-Castle points to the Young Audiences Content Fund, which was wound down in 2022 after three years after providing around £44M in support to producers. It had initially encouraged him to enter the kids content space, and since it was axed, children’s TV has fallen deeper into a funding crisis. “That spurred so many people into that direction,” he says. “It was a good example of government taking this corner of the arts seriously. People felt valued and seen.”

Mundy-Castle isn’t giving up on the kids space, however, and has new projects in the works, including one with popstar Beyonce Knowles’ father, Mathew Knowles.

With an established children’s TV business, brand work for the likes of the Tate and drama directing entering the mix, Deadline asks Mundy-Castle if the name DocHearts quite captures everything that’s going on in this pocket of southwest London, as his company heads towards a decade in business in 2026.

“I often tussle with the idea of rebranding, but I always come back to the fact I don’t need to,” he responds. “We’re called DocHearts and some people see us as a purely doc and unscripted outfit. But anything can be born from a real story and that’s what it means to be a DocHeart: You’re using the principles of documentary for all kinds of genres.”