Behind the screens: Meet 14 next generation South Australian filmmakers
Lights, cameras, action, these South Aussies are taking the state’s screen industry back to levels of activity not seen since its 1970 glory days. See who to watch.
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A new generation of South Australian filmmakers is helping to take the state’s screen industry back to levels of activity not seen since its glory days of the 1970s.
The international success of Adelaide’s Philippou Brothers and their hit horror flick Talk To Me has inspired and opened doors for homegrown film creatives, from writers and directors to actors and animators.
Through its Film Lab: New Voices program, co-funded by the Adelaide Film Festival and Screen Australia, the SA Film Corporation is teaming many of these budding auteurs to jointly develop potential projects.
With screen activity also diversifying across different platforms, from web series to streaming services, it’s time to meet SA’s new wave of artistic visionaries, screen storytellers and content creators.
Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese and Tom Phillips
Writers and directors Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese teamed with producer Tom Phillips to create Lesbian Space Princess, believed to be the first animated feature-length film made in SA.
“The film is all about empowering under-represented voices in Australia, especially in comedy,” Hough Hobbs said.
“Basically every character – except for the Straight White Maliens – is a person of colour.”
The second film to come out of the Film Lab: New Voices program, it had preview screenings at this year’s Adelaide Film Festival.
Now Lesbian Space Princess has been selected to have its world premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival in February, to be followed by a cinema release.
Hough Hobbs and Varghese are also a couple who had individually worked with Phillips on other projects before Lesbian Space Princess, and the trio are now developing a slate of potential pitches.
“We were all in each other’s circles but this was the first time the three of us worked together as a team … and it’s definitely not the last,” Hough Hobbs said.
“It’s a really good career accelerator for all three of us.”
Johanis Lyons-Reid
Filmmaking runs in the family for Johanis Lyons-Reid – the 35-year-old cinematographer and director said he was drawn to it while working with his parents, who ran screen programs for young people.
Lyons-Reid’s big break came in 2022 with Black Empire, an SBS documentary tracing the story of Indigenous rapper Jimblah through the music industry.
It picked up its director a Gold Award at the Australian Cinematography Society awards and Lyons-Reid’s production company now has $30k to play with thanks to a grant from the Film Lab: New Voices program.
“I’m very conscious of those voices that get pushed to the side,” Lyons-Reid said.
“Where there is a power imbalance, that’s where the most an interesting stories usually are.
“Film as an art form is not necessarily going to solve these problems, but it can create a tension point or highlight those issues in an interesting way.”
Piri Eddy
Piri Eddy has already made waves in Adelaide’s theatre scene, published his fiction in some of the country’s most presitigous literary magazines, and the 35-year-old is now taking on the world of film.
His 2020 play about country Australia, Forgiveness, won the prestigious Jill Blewett Playwrights Award, and his 2022 short film The Last Elephant on Earth won Best Short Film at the 54th Australian Writers’ Guild Awards.
Premiering at the 2022 Adelaide Film Festival, it is an off-kilter take on environmental destruction, about a meteor hurtling towards earth which no one appears to be taking seriously.
“I think of myself as being a curious person and I’m always looking for new ways to tell stories,” Eddy said.
“Theatre is great because can work with people in the same room, and bring their ideas together in the same space, but film is great because it’s really visual and you can play with the viewer’s focus in interesting ways.”
Eddy is currently writing a horror film called The Debt, and is in the running for a $600k grant from Film Lab: New Voices.
Fraser Whitehead
Fraser Whitehead cut his teeth working in the art department, helping design sets and props for major local productions like the 2022 Stan series The Tourist.
The 28-year-old said his two years working on the tactile elements on film shaped how he approaches his craft and influenced his two breakout short films.
Subject, which picked up five trophies at the SA Screen Awards, is a science fiction thriller about a woman trapped inside a laboratory, while he described Strega as an “experimental dance film”, which was projected across three screens at The Lab on Light Square.
“They have this big, curved screen and we were able to have it so that three dancers were on each screen at the same time in a synchronised way,” he said.
Whitehead received both the Mercury Cinema’s Hanlon Larsen Screen Fellowship and grant money from its Quicksilver Production Fund.
Anna Lindner
Actor, writer and director Anna Linder’s SBS series A Beginner’s Guide to Grief won the AACTA for Best Digital Series in 2022.
Based on Lindner’s own personal story, the dark comedy follows character Harry Wylde as she navigates the loss of two terminally ill parents in one week.
In the show, Wylde learns the hard way that grief doesn’t play by any rules – but neither will she.
Lindner had been working in the US for many years but returned to the Barossa Valley when her father had a terminal illness, and her mother also had a serious health diagnosis.
“I started writing this idea for a series which then ended up being picked up by Screen Australia through one of their initiatives,” she said.
“You are allowed to feel moments of joy, even when you are deep in grief.”
Lindner’s episode for another comedy-drama series, It’s Fine, I’m Fine, also had its world premiere in competition at Cannes.
As an actor, she appeared in Closer Productions’ acclaimed four-part drama The Hunting and recently performed in State Theatre’s premiere of the David Williamson comedy The Puzzle.
Lindner has been selected for the third round of Film Lab: New Voices which is currently underway, teamed with well-known writer-actor Elena Carapetis and SA producer Adam Camporeale.
They are now developing a feature film screenplay called The Sandcastle, which Lindner describes as a “black-and-white, surrealist, mythical thriller”.
Bryce Kraehenbuehl
“A documentary about an extinct environment shot on an extinct film” is how Bryce Kraehenbuehl describes Red Earth, his 2023 short about the beauty of the SA Outback.
Inspired by memories of living in the Adelaide Hills, he shot it on the now discontinued Kodak Aerochrome film, which brought out strong, reddish hues in the landscape.
In a time where many filmmakers are shooting on digital, mainly out of financial necessity, Kraehenbuehl is actively turning against the tide, spending roughly $4000 on acquiring the rare film type.
“It was really interesting to use because there aren’t really any guides on how to do it,” he said.
“I think the big thing about shooting on film is that you have to be really careful with what you shoot and how you shoot it, where with digital you can just keep going.
“You have to change your process and you can’t approach it in the same way, because you only get a few takes to get it right.”
Kraehenbuehl was awarded a $45k Hanlon Larsen Screen Fellowship to realise the project, and it took out an award for Specialised Cinematography at the 2024 Australian Cinematographers Society awards.
Derik Lynch
Yankunytjatjara dancer, actor and singer Derik Lynch stars in the largely autobiographical Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black), which he also co-wrote and co-directed with Matthew Thorne.
The short film, which is Lynch’s film writing and directing debut, has made big waves both internationally and at home.
It had its world premiere at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, also known as the Berlinale, where it became the first film to win both the Silver Bear jury prize for best short film and the Teddy Award for best short film with LGBTQI themes.
It also won a South Australian arts industry Ruby Award last year, and the national Screen Diversity Inclusion Network Award, among a total of 22 awards to date.
Dipped in Black has continued to screen at film events around the world in 2024, receiving more recognition abroad than in Australia.
As a First Nations and gay man, Lynch said the past year had been a time to take stock and “reflect on my own back yard and my own country”.
Lynch has also been talking with potential future producers, writers and collaborators.
“I just want to slow the pace down, to look at what my next project is,” he said.
Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen
This young Adelaide directing duo’s first feature film You’ll Never Find Me, about a woman who seeks shelter from a storm with a reclusive man living in a trailer park, was selected for the Tribeca Film Festival in New York and other major festivals, including the Melbourne Film Festival.
It is nominated for the 2025 AACTA award for Best Indie Film.
Screenwriter Indianna Bell and editor Josiah Allen met while studying film at university.
Their previous short films Call Connect, a 16 minute one-take drama, and The Recordist each won the Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short in consecutive years at the Austin Film Festival, and Bell was also listed in that US festival’s list of 25 Screenwriters to Watch.
Distribution rights for the horror-thriller You’ll Never Find Me in North America and the UK were acquired by international streaming service Shudder, which released the film in March.
Bettina Hamilton, Matt Vesely, Lucy Campbell
As a team, this trio – producer Bettina Hamilton, director Matt Vesely and writer Lucy Campbell – created the sci-fi feature Monolith.
Their debut feature film, Monolith was selected for SXSW and a host of other festivals around the world, won the 2024 SA Screen Award for Best Feature Film and is currently streaming on Binge.
It was the first film made through the SA Film Corporation, Adelaide Film Festival and Screen Australia’s joint Film Lab: New Voices program.
In Monolith, a stubborn podcast journalist discovers an enigmatic artefact which she deems to be proof of an alien conspiracy.
Hamilton also produced the new feature drama title Kangaroo Island, which recently premiered at the closing event of the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival.
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