MELANIE DICKS

CO-FOUNDER

Melanie Dicks co-founded Fingerprint Content and helped steer the company through both the pandemic and her own long illness. Our work today is a tribute to her fierce love for storytelling, her tenacity, and her care for her colleagues. An award-winning producer, Melanie founded and led three creative companies over a 30-year career, beginning in the BBC drama department and going on to produce films across the world, working with talents including Naomi Watts, Kevin Costner, David Schwimmer, Colin Firth, Thandiwe Newton, and Stephen Frears.

Among her many achievements, Melanie produced The Eye, a psychological thriller starring Indian actor Shruti Haasan and directed by Daphne Schmon. She championed the young, all-female creative team from the start, recognising the film’s resonance and power long before it premiered. The film went on to win Best Film, Best Director, and Best Cinematography at both the London Independent Film Festival and the Greek International Film Festival, and has already had a transformative impact on audiences around the world — something Melanie took enormous pride in witnessing.

In 2010, Melanie co-founded Greenshoot, the first sustainability consultancy of its kind for the screen industries. Over the next decade, Greenshoot supported more than 500 content projects in reducing their environmental footprint — saving both carbon and cost — and established itself as a global leader in sustainable production. Melanie authored several international white papers on the topic and represented the UK at major film festivals as a recognised expert on environmental sustainability and the arts.

From Barbara Kingsolver:

From the very first time I spoke with Melanie Dicks, I knew I wanted to be on her team. And I don't just mean that I wanted to work with Fingerprint Content to make a movie - although I did, and still do. But more than that, I had a powerful sense that whatever Melanie was doing, I wanted to be doing it too.

In a world where people with power and resources would mostly rather not think about waste and climate change, Melanie made it her life's work to help people take responsibility. In an industry that relentlessly asks artists to ramp up entertainment value and sacrifice our ethics, Melanie did exactly the opposite. She and her colleagues sought me out because they believed in the complex, challenging things I had to say about climate change and class and injustice. Melanie believed in the capacity of art to change hearts and minds. She had faith enough in the world to live her most hopeful dreams and pull the rest of us along.

And finally, in an industry that routinely expects women to smile and shut up, she didn't. She built an alternate world, an alternate industry, where women were empowered to speak our minds. She showed us by example how not to shut up, but to keep talking until we're not just holding up half the sky, but truly inhabiting our place, in full possession of our experience and wisdom. I was so inspired by Mel. It hurts my heart to think of that bright light going out, so I think I won't. I think what she'd like us to do now is keep being inspired, keep working for a safer, kinder world, and never shut up till we get there.

Barbara Kingsolver