Kirsten Sheridan was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1976. She began her formal film training in 1993, attending the New York University Script Writing School run in conjunction with University College Dublin. She then went on to study Film and Television Production and Film Appreciation at University College Dublin before undertaking a Diploma in Film Production at Dun Laoghaire College of Art & Design, Ireland's national film school, from which she graduated with a distinction in July 1998.
She has directed five shorts starting with a FilmBase/RTE short script award in 1995. Her college graduation film “Patterns” won many prestigious international film festival awards including Clermont-Ferrand, Cork, Galway, Dresden, Aspen, and Chicago. Her next film, the Shortcut, “The Case of Majella McGinty”, also won many awards at Foyle, Cork, San Francisco, Cologne, and Worldfest Houston.
Kirsten is the recipient of the Film Institute of Ireland / Guinness
Outstanding Young Irish Talent Award 1998. Her first feature length
screenplay “Honor Bright” won the Miramax Best Irish Screenplay Award '98 & has received development funding from the Irish Film Board and the European Script Fund. She recently directed a Druid Debut play “Abeyance”. She is currently writing two feature films “The Olga Korbut Story” (Treasure Entertainment) and “Freedom, California” (finalist in the American Screenwriting Awards 2003), and working on directing a documentary series, “7 Up in Ireland”.
She has directed her first feature film ("Disco Pigs" - Temple Films &
Renaissance Films) in May 2000. Kirsten has been selected as one of the
three finalists in Europe for the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers
Award with "Disco Pigs" which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival 2001 to much critical acclaim, had it's UK/Ireland release in October/November 2001 and in the rest of the world in 2002. It has played such festivals as Seattle, Sydney, Edinburgh, Montreal World, Chicago, Valldolid, Sao Paulo, Flanders Ghent, and Cork Film Festivals. It most recently won the jury prize at the Castellinaria Youth Film Festival, the gold medal at Giffoni Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Young European Cinema Film Festival and the Grand Prize Best Film at the Ourense Film Festival. Kirsten was nominated for Best New Director at the British Independent Film Awards and the Irish Film & TV Academy Awards and won the United International Pictures Best Director 2002 award.
Most recently she co-wrote the screenplay “In America”, which was nominated for the Humanitas Prize and won the National Board of Review 2003.
She can be contacted through her agent, Nick Marston, Curtis Brown, London.
