The Australian movie director uncovering the mystery of Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto
Sophia Banks on the elusive entrepreneur, supporting female talent, working with Jacob Elordi and getting her big break.
They always think I’m funny over here ’cause they think I have an Australian accent – even though, to you, I sound like an American,” says director Sophia Banks, laughing lightly.
She’s right, she does have that distinct Hollywood drawl – all oat milk and optimism – but no amount of time in LA can fully iron out those gloriously flat Australian vowels.
We’re speaking over Zoom – I in Sydney, Banks in her office in Beverly Hills. It’s late afternoon where she is, and the light is coming in slant, pale and golden; the kind that makes you forget that just a few months ago, the city was wrapped in smoke. “We were told to get ready,” she says. “The air quality wasn’t good, so we went to Florida, and we let someone whose house burnt down stay at ours for a little bit.”
Behind her are stills from Girls Skate, a short film she made in 2016 for the fashion designer Christian Siriano. “That was my ‘Girls can wear couture and be badass, too’ moment,” she says. “It was one of the first skateboarding pieces that really hit – I’ve definitely seen it copied in commercials since – but it blew up my career.”
Banks, 47, grew up in Killara on Sydney’s North Shore, and has been enamoured with cinema since childhood. The Wizard of Oz lit the fuse. “I remember totally loving the moment when she opens the door into that magical world,” she says.
By her tween years, she was coercing friends into starring in homemade “television” shows, casting her brother as cinematographer, and directing, acting, editing the whole thing herself. “The interest was always there.”
But filmmaking didn’t seem like a real job – not for women, not in Australia. So she studied business at the University of Technology Sydney, dutifully, and took a film class on the side at Sydney University. “I remember watching The Godfather [there] and thinking ‘I really want to direct’ – but it didn’t feel like something women did, so I thought I should go into fashion or costume design because I loved visual storytelling.”
She eventually moved to Los Angeles, started fashion brand Whitley Kros and styled celebrities. She then eased into wardrobe departments on commercials, and worked on the indie film Syrup, produced by Lila 9th Productions – the company founded by her father, Andrew Banks, a former Rich Lister and one half of (executive selection and search firm) Morgan & Banks.
On set, her focus was continually drawn to behind the camera. She remembers working on a commercial where things crystalised. “I kept pitching ideas to the director, suggesting how to write and present things. She said to me, ‘You know you’re a director, right?’ and that was the lightning-bolt moment. That was it.”
Still, Banks says her early stint in fashion wasn’t wasted. Quite the opposite. “Fashion gave me a strong understanding of how every element in the frame contributes to storytelling,” she says. “Hitchcock is one of my favourite filmmakers because you really see that level of intention. Those visual choices all contribute to character and mood.
“Fashion is really essential to character and world-building.”
In 2022, Banks made her feature directorial debut with Black Site, an action thriller starring Michelle Monaghan, star of The White Lotus. It was filmed on the Gold Coast during covid era January 2021 and was, she says, “a trial by fire”. “It was tough. People got quarantined, crew got locked out, it was chaos,” she recalls. “We had a deadline, so we had to deliver the film.” She got sick, they ran out of time – but she eventually convinced the studio to let her release a director’s cut.
“It was a massive learning curve for a first-time director. It made everything harder than it needed to be, but I’m honestly grateful for it now. Now that I’ve been through it, I feel so ready for the next one.”
That “next film” is a feature about Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive and pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin. It is based on The Satoshi Affair – Andrew O’Hagan’s slippery, gripping 2016 profile of Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who claims to be Satoshi – a story that delves into identity, performance, and the strange mechanics of belief in the internet age. O’Hagan, like the reader, never quite gets to the truth – and that’s exactly what hooked Banks.
“I was intrigued by the mystery,” she says. “There are so many theories around who this guy is. One of the characters who might be him is Australian, and the story involves him, a New Zealander, and two Americans. I just got really into it. At one point, I even thought maybe [the US National Security Agency] had created Bitcoin – which obviously, they didn’t – but it sent me down a rabbit hole.”
The script, by The West Wing alumni Mark Goffman, was handed to Banks by “these guys” from Silicon Valley. “Big Tech guys – one of them was involved in PayPal,” she says. “The script was incredible. I read it and I was like, ‘OK, I have to make this movie’.”
“Bitcoin is such a cultural zeitgeist – so much momentum – and we’re just racing to get the film made. It’s in the spirit of The Big Short or The Social Network. It’s fun and fast-paced, and by the end, you’re left wondering, ‘Maybe it is him, maybe it isn’t’. But either way, it’s a ride.”
It will be the first of Banks’s films released through her newproduction company, Getaway Entertainment – a joint venture with producer Damiano Tucci, launched in September. “I wanted to create space for great films with budgets between $5 and $40 million. Not necessarily for ‘new’ filmmakers, but for directors with strong voices who just need a shot.”
Banks is especially focused on creating opportunities for women. “I have this big group of directors, female directors, writers, producers,” she says. “And I just was like, ‘You know what? I want to get my films made, but I also want to help other people get their films made’, and I’m good at doing that.”
It’s personal, but also strategic. “If you just wait around as a director, you’re waiting for permission to do things from other people.”
The company’s slate is already packed, with titles including Blood on Snow, starring Tom Hardy, the recently released Oh Canada, from Paul Schrader with Richard Gere, Uma Thurman and Jacob Elordi, and several unannounced television projects.
“If you look at this year’s Oscars, most of the winners were small films,” Banks says. “We’re working with lots of filmmakers who want to shoot on film. [2025 Best Picture Academy Award-winner] Anora was shot that way, and we want to bring that kind of energy to Australia, too. There’s so much IP [intellectual property] and Marvel content out there, and we’re trying to make artist-driven, character-focused films.”
When Anora swept the Oscars, director Sean Baker used his speech to urge audiences back to the cinema. Banks was paying attention. “I’m totally with Sean Baker,” she says.
“It’s so interesting, because no matter how many algorithms or AI tools you use, none of them would’ve predicted Anora would be a hit. You need an artist to come up with something like that – and then people connect with it. That’s what art is. It’s people responding to people.”
She pauses. “I do think there’s always going to be a place for filmmaking,” Banks says with conviction.
“I genuinely think that as we lose real human connection, and as AI becomes more dominant, people are going to crave the emotional intimacy that films offer.”
This story is from the June issue of WISH.
More Coverage
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout