LAURA JAI SMITH
Laura is an award-winning film and television director and writer/director. Her work was described by Indiewire as “an intriguing marriage of the psychological and the visceral”. She is developing feature films as a director and writer/director with the BFI and Lunar Lander Films amongst others. They have been selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Frontières Market and Creative Europe’s Passion to Market feature development schemes. Her first feature script won the BBC Films / NFTS Development Award.
Laura has directed over thirty episodes of television drama for the BBC, Channel 4 and Hulu, including the BBC sci-fi action adventure series THE SPARTICLE MYSTERY, prime-time hospital drama CASUALTY (BBC) teen-drama THE CUT (Hulu/BBC) and Channel 4’s HOLLYOAKS. She was the 2nd unit director on Colm McCarthy’s post apocalyptic thriller CURFEW (Sky Originals / Moonage Pictures - starring Billy Zane and Sean Bean) and HIPPOPOTAMUS, the feature adaptation of Stephen Fry’s novel starring Matthew Modine and Fiona Shaw.
Her award-winning short films as writer/director were financed by Channel 4, the BFI, Film London and The Arts Council among others, and have been supported by the South Australian Film Corporation. They were filmed on location in the UK, Australia and Germany and screened worldwide at Oscar, BAFTA and BIFA qualifying festivals, in cinemas and on television, including the BFI London Film Festival, Locarno, Hollyshorts, Aesthetica, Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Curzon and Vue cinema chains and on Channel 4. Laura is a graduate of the NFTS and has a 1st Class Degree in Fine Art.
