Donna McRae

Australian filmmaker Donna McRae is undaunted by ‘swimming against the tide’. She works across colour, black & white, long takes and multi-channel video with exceptional fluency. Her particular interrogations of ghosts, 19th century gender roles and post-punk rock‘n’roll offer a surprising and powerful potential.

After graduating from the VCA, Donna had several shorts selected for local and international festivals while her first micro-budget feature, Johnny Ghost (2012), won seven awards and two Special Jury Prizes. Her video installations have screened in galleries here and overseas and makes music videos.

Her second micro budget supernatural feature Lost Gully Road has worldwide distribution, won Best Feature at three International Film Festivals and was sold to Channel 9. Her feature documentary Cobby: The Other Side of Cute was sold to Foxtel and Binge. She has various projects in development which have received Screen Australia development support. In 2023 she made a 22 minute documentary about “Our Ghostly Crew”, the making of a painting by artist Michael Vale which won the prestigious Moran Prize in 2021, and the film was voted #13 in Best Australian films of 2023.  Donna has been nominated for Best Direction in a Feature Film for Lost Gully Road at the Australian Directors Guild awards in 2019 and is in post-production for her next feature film, a ghost story body horror mermaid melodrama Meerestille. She lectures at Deakin University.