Ricardo Pollack
agent: Natalie Spanier - natalie@sternwild.com
Ricardo is an award winning executive producer and director with extensive experience of both retrospective and unfolding observational stories. Often involving complex access, he brings intelligence, a distinctive style and gripping story-telling to all his work. At home with both UK set and global stories, he has produced work for many international broadcasters including the BBC, Channel 4, Netflix and PBS. His work ranges from docuseries to single films and feature docs.
Ricardo is an extremely versatile creative leader and filmmaker. As an executive producer, he is hands on and likes to set the creative and editorial vision for the projects he leads. He has delivered major flagship series such as the award winning Hospital (BBC) and The Met (BBC), 6-part observational series where he has been in charge of large teams, complex legal and compliance issues and negotiating difficult access.
He has also delivered global, retrospective series such as the critically acclaimed The Boys from Brazil: Rise of the Bolsonaros (BBC and PBS) and Bad Boy Billionaires: India (Netflix). These series told gripping, past tense stories through the sophisticated use of archive and insider testimony. Sex on Trial (Channel 4) used dramatization and archive to tell the story of some of America’s most high profile student sexual assault cases and involved navigating highly complex legal and compliance requirements.
As a director, Ricardo has a passion for global stories. He made his name with the ground-breaking, observational 18 with a Bullet (BBC and PBS), a gritty series of films following the lives of teenage gang members on the streets of San Salvador for which he embedded with the gang for two years. He loves complex, multi-layered story-telling and is unafraid to tackle difficult subjects. Bill Cosby: Fall of an American Icon (BBC) used extraordinary archive and first hand testimony to tell the story of Cosby’s downfall while feature documentary The Trouble with Aid (BBC) brought a cinematic quality to the epic story of humanitarianism. All have shared a distinctiveness of style and tone and an absolute commitment to the power of a gripping narrative.