My friend and mentor Felicity Oppé, who has died aged 69 of cancer, was a film and TV producer who later became a family therapist.
One of her main marks in film and TV was made as development producer at Fiction Factory Films in Cardiff, where her productions garnered a number of accolades, including the BBC’s Dennis Potter award for the short film Moth in 2004.
There she also nurtured a number of film-makers, including me, the screenwriter Catrin Clarke and executive producers Kate Crowther and Laura Cotton. As a friend and colleague she was someone who often understood what you needed before you did.
Fizzy, as she was generally known, was born in Bristol, but the family moved to London when she was five years old. Her father, Tom Oppé, was a professor of paediatrics; her mother, Margaret (nee Butcher), was a nurse.
After Putney high school and Cambridge University, she became a national organiser for the Independent Film Association in the late 1970s and in that role was influential in achieving funding for independent film workshops across the UK, including latterly from Channel 4.
In 1985 Fizzy moved to become centre director at the Northeast Media Training Centre in Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, a groundbreaking organisation that provided training in film and television to the long-term unemployed. While there she started a relationship with Ieuan Morris, a writer and film-maker, and they had two children, Nia and Bryn.
In 1993 the family moved to south Wales, where, after roles as a part-time lecturer in television at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism (1993-96) and as a production coordinator at the Wales Film Council (1991-95), she joined Fiction Factory Films in 2000.
After a decade there, she decided on a change in direction, retraining as a family therapist at the School of Health Studies at the University of South Wales before gaining a postgraduate certificate in systemic counselling and an MSc in systemic psychotherapy. In 2017 she set up a private practice, Cardiff Therapeutic Counselling, with two other therapists, for which she worked until her death.
She is survived by Ieuan, whom she married in 2007, Nia and Bryn, and her siblings, Paul, Mark, James and Fiona.
