Liana Stewart

Hailing from Butetown, Wales, Liana Stewart is an award-winning director specialising in observational and character-led documentaries for TV and branded content.

Liana has worked on a multitude of documentaries as a self-shooting director, including Ambulance (BBC One, 2018); the Grierson-nominated My First Time, part of the Take Your Knee Off My Neck series (Channel 4, 2020); Sex Actually with Alice Levine (Channel 4, 2022); and Sprint (Netflix, 2024). Her short-form documentary Black and Welsh (BBC Wales, 2020) was nominated for three BAFTA Cymru awards, winning Director: Factual. Her work has been shown on such outlets as the BBC, Channel 4 and Netflix.

With a Jamaican father and a Chinese, Bajan and white Welsh mother, Liana enjoyed a culturally rich upbringing. However, at university, she experienced a clear divide between the socioeconomic classes and, as she sought to break into the screen industries, she struggled to find existing Black, female and working-class role models. Despite an expectation that things might be different when she made the move from Cardiff to London, she found the same barriers existed.

As an aspiring director, Liana has faced the unwelcome but common perception that the role of producer was as far as many women can go. She may have overcome this in documentary to carve out a successful career, but she notes that the barriers preventing progression for a Black female director to make a feature film or to become a series director remain. Liana is passionate about changing perceptions and is deeply committed to making a meaningful impact both through her films and in the broader industry.