Nik Panic is a film director, producer and screenwriter whose career spans more than three decades across narrative cinema, documentary, music video, theatre and audiovisual art. He began working in film in 1991, gaining formative experience as part of filming and post-production crews on major international productions by directors including Ridley Scott (The Browning Version, Crisis in the Hot Zone), Mike Figgis (Hotel, Ten Minutes Older: The Cello), Beeban Kidron (Amy Foster), Michael Hoffman (Restoration), and Caroline Thompson (Black Beauty), among many others. Working alongside an extraordinary range of performers — from Michael Caine, Ian McKellen and Meg Ryan to Salma Hayek, Lucy Liu and John Malkovich — shaped his understanding of performance, storytelling and cinematic craft.

Since 2000, Panic has focused increasingly on directing and producing his own work, creating music videos, short films and promotional projects, while also producing the internationally staged theatre play Bette Davis on the Edge, performed in the UK, the USA and Singapore. His feature documentary And The Winner Isn’t (2017) explores the cultural mythology surrounding fame and awards, and was released theatrically in the United States; its title song was shortlisted for the Academy Awards in 2018.

Alongside his film work, Panic has collaborated on high-profile cultural and humanitarian projects. Between 2013 and 2015 he served as audio and promo video producer for UNICEF’s Giving Tales, a series of animated audiobooks voiced by internationally renowned actors including Sir Michael Caine, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry and Ewan McGregor. In 2022, he was Associate Producer on the documentary Ocean Emergency: Currents of Hope for ATI and The CW Network (USA).

Since 2022, Panic has been one half of the audiovisual artistic duo Sz. Berlin ± Panic, an ongoing collaboration with Istria-based artist Sz. Berlin. Together they document and re-imagine abandoned industrial sites in Istria and Rijeka, transforming decaying infrastructures into haunting post-industrial landscapes through film and sound. Their work has been exhibited internationally, and in 2024 they released the Trilogy of Decay, an alchemical audiovisual response to three abandoned Croatian sites, where power stations, rail depots and coal separators are fleetingly re-animated — shifting from dead industrial monuments into newly “un-dead” cinematic presences.

His latest films, Illumination [BGD-25] and Transformation [SVT-25], were developed during a five-week residency inside Belgrade’s former electric power station as part of FASIH (Future Art Science Industrial Heritage). Shot on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 6K and using a sonic score composed entirely from the building’s own emissions, the film exemplifies his hybrid approach to storytelling, combining rigorous research with sensorial, immersive filmmaking.