An artist with an original voice and an unapologetic flair for thriller and horror storytelling, Mia’Kate Russell’s directorial work is marked as much by darkness as it is at times a sly, even camp, humour. Mia’Kate Russell has the gift of creating emotionally impactful stories that challenges the audience to examine their own behavior as her complex and flawed characters are forced to confront the consequences of their own. Mia is committed to making wickedly entertaining character-based genre films with authenticity and a social conscience.
As a writer and director, her short films have won more than 30 awards and screened at prestigious festivals all around the world including SITGES, Screamfest and Shriekfest. Her first short film Auditioning Fanny, starring Sam Johnson, won the Best Short Film award at the Phenom Film Festival (2012), her next short Swallow won multiple awards for FX Makeup and had the honour of being nominated for Best Picture at SITGES (2014), Death By Muff was a finalist of the ABCs of Death 2 and was included on the horror anthology ABCs of Death 2.5, Liz Drives (2017) won multiple awards at genre festivals both in Australia and overseas including Sydney Indie Film Festival and Monster Fest, and the award-winning Maggie May (2019) was a hit with audiences and critics at festivals all over the world, the last two surpassing 100,000 views each on online platform ALTER. Mia’s work is featured in Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’s 2018 book 1000 Women in Horror.
As a make-up and special effect artist, Russell has worked regularly in the Australian film and television industry for over a decade as the head of department on many Australian and international films including 2040, What If It Works, Scare Campaign and have been a make-up artist for major productions including Nitram and The Leftovers.
With a Bachelor degree in Theatre, a Master in Screenwriting and a wealth of experience creating practical on camera horror effects, she brings a high level of hands-on creativity to the films she makes. Her IMDB profile lists more than 60 films and TV make-up and special effects work - of those, only a handful of directors are female. In response, in 2011 Mia’Kate started Make Trouble Films, with the-end goal of writing and directing horror films that have an underbelly of feminism and a social message.
