Rising star Sarah Macdonald
What's so special? The BAFTA award-winner is making waves with her hard-hitting documentaries

The final of The X Factor last year attracted a peak audience of 14 million viewers. It is reality shows such as these that film-maker Sarah Macdonald has to pit her "human rights/undercover documentaries" against.

Macdonald describes opportunities to air her films (past projects have included Burma's Secret War and Suing the Pope) as "few and far between". But she is ambitious to grow her "tiny" independent film and TV production company Uproar Productions for an eventual sale and has already set up Uproar Asia in Singapore, with an office in Los Angeles in the pipeline.

The film-maker describes starting her company as the best thing she's ever done but admits that it's tough playing with small budgets when you're up against "the big boys, who are big on an international scale". Not content to limit herself to Britain—"anyone who relies on the UK market will have a hard time. I've always looked to the international market"—she's confident that she can impress distributors in Asia for future projects.

This year she intends to "get a couple of gritty documentaries out that will really cause a stink". In terms of further opportunities, she says: "I've worked a lot with [comedian and political activist] Mark Thomas. We have ideas for cinema-release documentaries for the international market."

It's got to be fun, otherwise it isn't worth it, says Macdonald. "You're on the treadmill running so fast, and when you're out there hustling to get it done, sometimes you think 'Oh my God, I don't know if I'll be able to keep this energy up'. But you just do."