Screen Ireland has announce that three placements have been awarded for this year’s edition of the Series’ Women programme as part of Screen Ireland’s skills development scholarship in partnership with the Erich Pommer Institut (EPI).
Producers Natalie McAuley, Kate McColgan, and Tina O’Reilly will participate in the next edition of Series’ Women taking place from November 2024 to April 2025. This career development programme aims to increase the visibility and industry exposure of female producers and female-driven TV drama series projects at the European level.
Natalie McAuley is a producer at Subotica, one of Ireland’s leading television and film production companies. Natalie joined Subotica in 2017 and since then has worked creatively across dozens of projects with writers and directors including Aisling Walsh, Frank Berry, Ailbhe Keogan and Hannah Quinn to name a few. In 2021, McAuley co-produced the IFTA-winning feature film Aisha starring Letitia Wright and Josh O’Connor.
In 2022, she co-produced the Irish television series North Sea Connection for RTÉ, Viaplay and A E Distribution. The series went on to air on the BBC iPlayer. In the same year, McAuley co-produced the comedy-drama feature film Joyride starring Olivia Colman, currently on Netflix. In 2024, McAuley produced the four-part mini-series The Boy That Never Was (RTÉ, Sphere Abacus Distribution) starring Colin Morgan. The series has been sold to France Télévision and UKTV channel Alibi. Prior to joining Subotica, McAuley worked for filmmaker Gerard Barrett at Blank Page Productions. During her time there she co-produced the feature film Limbo, which premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh.
Kate McColgan has worked in film and TV across development, production and acquisitions. She has worked on films for Warner Bros, Disney, Universal, and Paramount in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. Kate ran the TV co-production slate for Element Pictures. She worked in acquisitions and production for TWC on projects such as The King’s Speech and Inglorious Basterds. She was also Head of European Production for MPI Media. As an independent producer, her first production was From the Dark, which was in Competition at Fantastic Fest and Sitges and was sold to Netflix. She produced The Drummer and the Keeper for Screen Ireland, which won Best Feature at Galway Film Fleadh and London Film Festival 2017 and four IFTA nominations.
Kate is CEO of Calico Pictures, the slate includes projects with SHUK, the BFI, Screen Ireland, Northern Ireland Screen, Sky and BBC. She produced the TV Series Darklands for Virgin/Fremantle and was a producer on the BBC1 comedy The Cleaner. She recently produced The Heist Before Christmas for Sky starring Timothy Spall and Jimmy Nesbitt. She was on the Board of Screen Ireland for 6 years, was Ireland’s representative at the Rotterdam Film Lab 2017 and is a graduate of the Screen Leaders programme.
Tina O’Reilly is an award-winning producer with a significant back catalogue of projects from film and TV series to live events. She is a current attendee of EAVE 2024, previous participant of Rotterdam Producer’s Lab and Screen Ireland’s Series Accelerator in conjunction with MediaXchange. Currently, she is in post-production on Recreation, a feature docudrama directed by Jim Sheridan and David Merriman featuring Vicky Krieps, Colm Meaney and Aidan Gillen.
Previous features include IFTA 2024 Best Film That They May Face The Rising Sun (BFI London Film Festival premiere 2023), The Dance (BFI London Film Festival premiere 2021), Henry Glassie: Field Work (TIFF 2019 premiere, Glasgow Film Festival and Best Irish Doc at the Galway Film Fleadh), Song of Granite (Irish Entry for Best Foreign Language Film to the 90th Oscars, Best Feature Film at Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema and nominated for multiple awards), A Turning Tide in the Life of Man (Best European Documentary at CIRCOM, Best Film at the International Film Festival of Groix) and Silence (London Film Festival 2013, Michael Dwyer Discovery Award at the Dublin International Film Festival).
As part of the scholarship, the selected producers will participate in state-of-the-art training opportunities addressing topics such as visibility, leadership, and digital entrepreneurship, as well as receiving curated 1-1 mentoring and pitch coaching from leading international industry experts. The programme will also support market attendance at TV Drama Vision in Gothenburg and Series Mania in Lille, facilitating networking opportunities and access to decision makers and top industry figures.
Past Series’ Women scholarship recipients include Anna Mannion (Tri Moon Films), Emma Foley (Pale Rebel Productions) and Claire McCabe (Pipedream Productions).
Click here for more information about Series’ Women.
