Bio

Oonagh Kearney has written and directed nine short films and one documentary with the support of the Irish Arts Council, Irish Film Board, RTE, TG4, BRITDOC and The Wellcome Trust.

Her work has screened globally at film festivals around the world, at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, British Film Institute, Irish Film Institute, Big Screen Plaza in New York and in the 2014 Art on the London Underground Series. Her work has been broadcast on RTE and TG4, distributed on RTE and TG4 iplayer, and via dvd with Aesthetica magazine and Tenderpixels Gallery in London.

Oonagh’s short dance film Her Mother’s Daughters screened at over seventy film festivals and won seven awards. Her 2012 Reel Art documentary Wonder House was nominated for Best Emerging International Filmmaker and awarded special mention at the London Open City Doc Festival in 2013.

"We want to draw special mention to Wonder House, probably the most ambitious film in the shortlist. We very much appreciate the originality of ideas expressed and applaud the beauty of the piece."

 - Briony Hanson, Head of Film, The British Council

Oonagh cut her teeth in the film industry as casting director to Ken Loach on his Palm d’Or winning film The Wind That Shakes the Barley in 2005. She trained at the National Film and Television School in London before casting five more feature films. Since 2010, she has focused on writing and directing. Oonagh’s films take a playful approach to the impact of family and tensions between our private and public selves. In her film and TV work, women often experience emotional or ethical conflicts connected to rites of passage. Her 2010 Irish Film Board short The Christening tells the story of Ailbhe, an Irish teenager, who must travel to London for an abortion and get home again for a family christening. 

Selected as a director on the UK scheme Guiding Lights in 2011, Oonagh was mentored by British filmmaker Clio Barnard. In 2013, Oonagh received a John Brabourne Award for emerging professionals in the British film and television industry. In November 2014, she was selected for the Puglia Experience, a workshop for sixteen international screenwriters in Italy. An alumna of She Writes and the Berlinale Talent Campus, Oonagh recently took part in the Talent Lab run by the Irish Film Board.

Her latest short dance film The Wake premiered at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival in February 2016. Since then it has screened at fifteen festivals and won five international awards. With Tyrella Films, Oonagh wrote, directed and produced her first Irish language short Oíche Nollaig na mBan/Womens’ Christmas Night this year. Commissioned by TG4, it was broadcast in March 2016 and recently picked up the Best Irish Short and the Audience Award at the Offline Film Festival in Birr. In April with the support of a Screen Training Ireland Bursary, Oonagh worked as shadow director on the RTE/Deadpan co-production Can’t Cope Won’t Cope, directed by Cathy Brady. The experience taught her how to manage the pace of TV production and she looks forward to working in the medium.