FEATURE FILM JUDGES
Kiah Roache-Turner
Kiah Roache-Turner is a writer/director who started his career in the commercial world directing hundreds of campaigns and several award-winning music videos. His viral shorts (including Daemonrunner and Chronicles of the Dead) have been watched by over fifty million people. In 2015 his debut film, Wyrmwood, premiered at Fantastic Fest in Austin Texas. It became an instant cult classic and went straight to number one on Netflix. His follow-up feature, Nekrotronic, starring Monica Belluci, premiered at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival. Wyrmwood: Apocalypse premiered at Sitges Film Festival in 2021, and won an Audience Award at the Sydney Film Festival the same year. His new film, Sting, is currently in post-production and will premiere later this year.
Lauren Grimson
Lauren is an award-winning, Sydney-based film and television actor whose credits include leading roles in Dark Sister, directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City), The Possessed (alongside John Jarratt and Lincoln Lewis), Water Horse (with Jess Tovey and Socratis Otto) and an appearance in Kiah Roache-Turner's Wyrmwood: Apocalypse. Lauren’s performance in The Legend of Ben Hall won her Best Supporting Actor at the Wild Bunch Film Festival, in Arizona USA. Additionally, she was nominated for the Science Fiction Film Festival Best Actor award for her leading role in Maya. Lauren holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and completed additional acting training at TAFTA and NIDA (Open Program). She was recently dubbed "Australia’s New Scream Queen” by FilmInk Magazine.
Sam Curtain
Sam Curtain is a Tasmanian filmmaker, out to carve new boundaries in independent cinema. Never satisfied with the ordinary, Sam's films are renowned for their hard edge, cutting like a rusty knife that is uniquely Australian. His debut feature, Blood Hunt was released in 2017 and proved to be an audience favourite with its mix of high-octane action and bloody thrills. His follow-up, The Slaughterhouse Killer, premiered in 2020 amidst COVID lockdowns, and has gone on to receive distribution internationally. Sam has recently completed his third film of twisted Tassie tales, Beaten to Death, a dark psychological horror/drama of “raw nihilistic power with an uncompromising brutality”.
SHORT FILM JUDGES
Cassandra Magrath
Long before she landed her most iconic role in the global hit Wolf Creek, Cassandra Magrath was growing up on Aussie screens as regular characters on iconic TV shows Ocean Girl, The Wayne Manifesto, The Crash Zone, and SeaChange. She has performed in over a dozen feature films, and over two decades of television acting, including Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Wentworth, and Jack Irish. She graduated with a Masters in Screenwriting from the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts, has directed two plays for the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and produced an award-winning short, Liz Drives, as well as a feature film, 36 Questions. She is a festival jury veteran having been a judge for the Noose Film Festival, the Stella Film Festival, and the St. Kilda Film Festival.
Doug Turner
Doug Turner, founder of MEDIA42, is a writer/director hailing from the UK, but has called Sydney, Australia home since 2001. He won the Best Comedy award at the Chichester Film Festival for his first short film Tender Words and from that moment decided to delve into feature films. Five years later the comedy horror I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer was released worldwide after festival success, taking home the Best Australian Feature award at A Night of Horror International Film Festival. Doug is also a member of Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) and Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) and recently gained a Master of Digital Media in his “spare” time. Doug is currently editing the 3D found footage creature feature Bloody Legends: Yara 3D.
Sara Elizabeth Joyce
Producer, author, and artist, Sara Elizabeth Joyce has been involved in the film industry for decades working on some of the biggest sci-fi/ horror films to come through Australia. Sara is currently focusing on her role at SBS, the release of her first novel, her resin art exhibitions, and her feature directorial debut. As well as travelling to film festivals and selling her most recent feature, as co-executive producer, to film markets in Asia.
UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY JUDGES
Ally Burnham
Ally Burnham is an AWGIE-winning screenwriter. A NIDA graduate (2016, Masters Writing for Performance), she is a freelance screenwriter, script editor, and author, best known for her feature film Unsound (2020), nominated for Best Original Feature at the 2020 AWGIE awards. The film won Best Australian Feature at the 2020 Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Best Fiction Feature Film at the 2020 ATOM Awards, and was nominated by Best Indie Feature at the 2020 AACTA Awards. Ally is the lead writer for Metropius. Her short film screenplay won Most Outstanding Animation at the 2022 AWGIE Awards.
Benjamin Jung-Clarke
From a young age, Benjamin Jung-Clarke dreamed of telling stories through film, spending most weekends with a stack of tapes from a video shop that would let kids rent R18+ classified films. With a passion for genre that is reflected in the bulk of his work, he saw international success with writing and producing Blood Hunt (2017), The Slaughterhouse Killer (2020), and Beaten to Death (2022).
Lynnaire MacDonald
Lynnaire MacDonald is a former film publicist and social media marketer, working with indie filmmakers around the globe and as a communications assistant for the New Zealand International Film Festival in 2019. Her passion for horror and genre films was sparked by her parents allowing her to stay up late and watch the “Friday Night Frights” in New Zealand in the 80s, which included such classics as Frankenstein and B-Movies like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. She is now moving into producing.