Kathryn Kennedy

Winner of the ADIFF Discovery award 2016 and the Bingham Ray New Talent award 2015, Kathryn Kennedy is a creative Irish Producer with Kennedy Films, and a member of ACE (Ateliers du Cinema Européen). Kathryn runs Kennedy Films together with award-winning Producer/Director Frankie Fenton.

Kennedy Films’ first feature is 8-time IFTA nominated, MY NAME IS EMILY (2015), with writer/director Simon Fitzmaurice. The film is a world-first as the Director Simon Fitzmaurice was physically paralysed with Motor Neuron Disease (ALS), he wrote and directed the entire film solely with his eyes and Tobii eye gaze technology. Simon passed away in October 2017.

My Name is Emily is a teenage love story and a road movie, starring Evanna Lynch (Harry Potter) and Michael Smiley (Kill List, A Field in England). It was nominated for 8 Irish Film and Television awards, it won Best Cinematography at the Galway Film Fleadh, the Youth Film Award at Internationales Filmfestival SCHLINGEL, the Newport Beach Achievement Award for Acting, the Victoria Texas Festival Jury Prize for Best Actress and many more festival awards. The London Screenwriter’s festival presented the Director with a lifetime achievement award for the film and since Simon’s death, this award has now been renamed the Fitzmaurice award. My Name is Emily had its North American Premiere at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival 2015 and screened at many international festivals. It was released theatrically throughout North America and Ireland.

Kennedy’s first feature documentary IT’S NOT YET DARK, directed by Frankie Fenton is based on the best-selling book of the same name written by Simon Fitzmaurice, and is narrated by Colin Farrell. It won Best Documentary and Best Cinematography at the Galway Film Fleadh 2016, and was selected for International Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2017. It had a highly successful festival run and successful theatrical, VOD releases in the US and internationally. Kathryn is producing Fenton’s next documentary ATOMIC HOPE, a climate-change documentary supported by Screen Ireland which will be completed in 2020.

Kathryn has an MA in Screenwriting, a BA in Film and has represented Ireland at Producer Labs in Rotterdam and Toronto. Currently Kathryn has a number of fiction films in development with Screen Ireland including, FIFTH THOUSAND WORDS by David Turpin, THE WÜRZBURG EFFECT by Alex Fegan and Oliver Callan and OTTOLINE by Andrew Legge.