RISING TALENT 2024: DIRECTORS

RISING TALENT 2024

The IF Rising Talent list for 2024 is made up of people we think will shift and lead our industry into the future. Some are newer faces, others have recently stepped into senior roles where they’re now making waves. We think you’ll want to work with all of them. We put this list together through a public call out and extensive insdustry outreach. This year, we had a staggering 692 names put forward. As always, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of talent that’s out there in Australia.

DIRECTORS

ADRIAN CHIARELLA

In 2023, Adrian Chiarella made his television directing debut with an episode of Stan’s Totally Completely Fine. This was immediately followed by directing two episodes of the fourth season of Five Bedrooms for Paramount+. Additionally, Chiarella made his episodic writing debut, with his own episode of Erotic Stories for SBS.

Prior to this, Chiarella wrote and directed several short films. 2014’s Touch earned him an Australian Directors’ Guild Award (ADG) nomination and 2018’s Black Lips, funded by Create NSW and SBS, screened at numerous festivals, including Palm Springs International Shortfest, St Kilda Film Festival, BFI Flare, Outfest Fusion, and Melbourne Queer Film Festival, where it won best short film. In 2021, Dwarf Planet, funded through the ADG, premiered in competition at Clermont-Ferrand before playing as a finalist in the Dendy Awards at Sydney Film Festival, and was nominated for an AACTA for Best Short Drama.

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BONNIE MOIR

Bonnie Moir began her career collaborating with some Australia’s most celebrated directors, including Garth Davis, Glendyn Ivin and Mark Molloy as a second unit director and assistant director. This led to an appreciation for detail-oriented, cinematic and actor-focused work.

In 2022, Moir directed all six episodes of season two of Love Me for Warner Bros. Television Production Australia and Foxtel/Binge, her first broadcast credit as director.

Her latest project is the six-part series Exposure, commissioned by Stan and distributed by All3Media International, which will be released in 2024. The series is produced through Thirdborn by producers Nicole O’Donohue, Shaun Grant and Justin Kurzel.

Moir’s short film Not Dark Yet is nominated for the 2024 AACTA Award for Best Short Film. It premiered at the 2023 Melbourne International Film Festival where she was selected to be a part of the Accelerator program.

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MOHINI HERSE

Mohini Herse is writer and director best known for creating Appetite, an SBS and Screen Australia Digital Original mystery drama which had its world premiere at Canneseries in 2023. As well as developing her own projects such feature film Hair, Herse is currently in production as set up director for Four Years, an Indian/Australian romance for SBS created by Mithila Gupta.

Herse’s other credits include directing both seasons of Australia’s first Instagram series, The Out There. In 2021, she served as Taika Waititi’s assistant on Thor: Love and Thunder.

In late 2023 Herse was awarded Screen Australia Enterprise funding to embark on a placement in London with the production company Merman (Catastrophe, This Way Up, Bad Sisters) for six months.

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DAVID ROBINSON-SMITH

David Robinson-Smith is a writer and director who grew up and is based in Budgewoi on NSW’s Central Coast. His work centres around themes of ambiguity, regret, memory, and class, and he seeks to find nuance in these areas, particularly through morally flawed characters.

His credits include short film Mud Crab, which screened at Santa Barbara International Film Festival in the US, Raindance Film Festival and BAFTA Aesthetica Short Film Festival in the UK and the Melbourne International Film Festival. Mud Crab has won multiple awards, including an Australian Directors’ Guild (ADG) Award for Robinson-Smith, as well as further prizes at CILECT, St Kilda Film Festival and Flickerfest. It is nominated for Best Short Film at the 2024 AACTA Awards.

Robinson-Smith’s latest short film is We Used To Own Houses, which had its world premiere at Melbourne International Film Festival as part of the 2023 Accelerator Lab, and went on to screen at SXSW Sydney. It was nominated for Best Direction in a Short Film at the ADG Awards.

Robinson-Smith is currently in development on his debut feature film Colossus, alongside executive producer Michele Bennett and producer Julia Corcoran. He was recently added to the Good Oil Films roster.

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JACK CLARK AND JIM WEIR

Filmmaking duo Jack Clark and Jim Weir met while studying at AFTRS, co-founding the independent production company Fax Machine shortly after graduating. Both Clark and Weir are previous nominees of Byron Bay Film Festival’s Young Australian Filmmaker of the Year Award for their respective shorts, Threshold and Julia. The pair have since been collaborating as co-directors, utilising their shared strength in framing genre elements from thriller and horror films in new, subversive contexts.

Clark and Weir’s breakout debut feature, Birdeater, premiered at the 2023 Sydney Film Festival, winning the Audience Award for Best Australian Narrative Feature. It will have its international premiere at SXSW in Austin in March and will be released theatrically later this year.

Clark and Weir are currently in development with Sweetshop & Green for their follow-up feature, a coming-of-age thriller set on Schoolies. Joel Edgerton is attached as executive producer.