Mia Kate Russell
Costume & Make-Up
Biography
An artist with an original voice and an unapologetic flair for thriller and horror storytelling, Mia’Kate Russell’s directorial work is marked as much by darkness as it is at times a sly, even camp, humour. Mia’Kate Russell has the gift of creating emotionally impactful stories that challenges the audience to examine their own behavior as her complex and flawed characters are forced to confront the consequences of their own. Mia is committed to making wickedly entertaining character-based genre films with authenticity and a social conscience. As a writer and director, her short films have won more than 30 awards and screened at prestigious festivals all around the world including SITGES, Screamfest and Shriekfest. Her first short film Auditioning Fanny, starring Sam Johnson, won the Best Short Film award at the Phenom Film Festival (2012), her next short Swallow won multiple awards for FX Makeup and had the honour of being nominated for Best Picture at SITGES (2014), Death By Muff was a finalist of the ABCs of Death 2 and was included on the horror anthology ABCs of Death 2.5, Liz Drives (2017) won multiple awards at genre festivals both in Australia and overseas including Sydney Indie Film Festival and Monster Fest, and the award-winning Maggie May (2019) was a hit with audiences and critics at festivals all over the world, the last two surpassing 100,000 views each on online platform ALTER. Mia’s work is featured in Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’s 2018 book 1000 Women in Horror. As a make-up and special effect artist, Russell has worked regularly in the Australian film and television industry for over a decade as the head of department on many Australian and international films including 2040, What If It Works, Scare Campaign and have been a make-up artist for major productions including Nitram and The Leftovers. With a Bachelor degree in Theatre, a Master in Screenwriting and a wealth of experience creating practical on camera horror effects, she brings a high level of hands-on creativity to the films she makes. Her IMDB profile lists more than 60 films and TV make-up and special effects work - of those, only a handful of directors are female. In response, in 2011 Mia’Kate started Make Trouble Films, with the-end goal of writing and directing horror films that have an underbelly of feminism and a social message.
Known For

Everything ends - marriages, life, civilization, Earth, and the universe as we know it. Say goodbye to everything you know and hello to madness and the outrageous, unexpected horrors lying beyond the dark.
Beyond the Dark

Young police officer Shane Cooper's first day on duty, after relocating to the small town of Red Hill, rapidly turns into a nightmare. News of a prison break, involving convicted murderer Jimmy Conway, sends the local law enforcement officers - led by the town's ruling presence, Old Bill - into a panic and leads to a terrifying and bloody confrontation.
Red Hill

Paul Hogan is reluctantly thrust back into the spotlight as he desperately attempts to restore his sullied reputation on the eve of being knighted.
The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee

A group of elite soldiers sent to infiltrate and extract the lead science team from Pine Gap, Australia's top secret underground military compound, after it comes under attack from unknown forces. The mission is compromised when they encounter a young woman with no memory of who she is or how she came to be there. As they try to escape, the group quickly discovers all is not as it seems and the facility has become a testing ground for something far more sinister.
Crawlspace

A popular prank TV show, Scare Campaign, has been entertaining audiences for the last 5 years with its mix of old school scares and hidden camera fun. But as we enter a new age of online TV, the producers find themselves up against a new hard edged web series that makes their show look decidedly quaint. It's time to up the ante, but will the team go too far this time, and are they about to prank the wrong guy?
Scare Campaign

An anthology of 26 fan entries submitted for inclusion in ABCs of Death 2, each offering various takes on the letter "M".
ABCs of Death 2 1/2

Clinging to a smooth, curved surface high above a sentient abyss, a woman tries to cover the few feet back to safety without losing purchase and falling to her death.
Curve

Sometime in the near future, paraplegic prison inmate Matt Mills meets "The Board" of Satoshi-Telefair Industries, who thank him for joining the Program. Under pressure and with a promise to make him walk again, Mills agrees to volunteer. He is injected with a synthetic nanomaterial and suffocated, only to wake up with restored use of his legs, yet alone in a steel cell in the first spoke of an experimental apparatus - The Wheel. A series of assailants inflict a multitude of damage to Mills' body and torment his mind, yet the synthetic nanomaterial not only restores his damaged organs, it re-engineers his strength. The experiment might be designed to kill, but Mills is determined to survive - and get back to his daughter before The Board finds her first.
2099: The Soldier Protocol

A late-night radio DJ with a program where people call to tell her real horror stories, soon will find out how far an obsessed fan is willing to go.
Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker

Dalia and her two young sisters grow up in a pagan apocalyptic cult led by an ancient Baltic goddess of death and reincarnation. On the night of an important cult ritual, a police raid rescues Dalia as cult members flee with her two sisters. Years later, as the guilt eats away at her, Dalia finds a potential link to the cult through a prominent and despised black metal artist sequestered in the woods. Dalia journeys to find her sisters but her quest for the truth becomes a descent into Hell.
Cult Girls

Mockumentary family adventure taking its cue from the YouTube viral video sensation. An Australian zoologist travels to China to find the baby panda - whose sneeze has been watched over 250 million times - in the hope that the star attraction will revitalise her ailing zoo.
Sneezing Baby Panda: The Movie

Progressive Amputation is introduced as a new form of punishment for particularly heinous crimes, in this pitch-black social satire by Matt Richards.
The Disappearance of Willie Bingham

A sweltering beach house party in 1986 turns savage when a spiked cupcake, a jealous cousin, and a gang of violent men crash the scene.
Penny Lane Is Dead

Auditioning Fanny follows an eventful week in the life of Fanny Love. A naive woman with stars in her eyes for an old Hollywood world long gone, and a dream of a love story lost in modern society. With the innocence of a child and the temper of a psychopath, she is thrilled when auditions for a new musical film starring heart throb Jack Baron are announced. With a spring in her step and a song in her heart, Fanny knows this is the big break she's been waiting for, and as long as nobody stands in her path, everything should work out just dandy.
Auditioning Fanny

Fresh from a Melbourne jail, Dan is reunited with the love of his life, Leanne. A fierce, passionate and tender couple who have learnt to appreciate the simplest pleasures in life, Dan and Leanne celebrate, and when surrounded by friends he announces he has resolved to go straight.
Hail

They were Australia’s bad days. Men killed other men and laughed. All that was left for the children of the dead was to remember. If they had the strength.
Black Chook

Two estranged sisters, Sam and Maggie, attempt to reconnect after the death of their mother. But Maggie isn't interested in anything, and that could be Sam's worst nightmare.
Maggie May

Commander Charlie Shaw finds himself alone on the red planet and isolated from his crew. He uncovers some disturbing truths about his situation and the fate of the mission.
Thalamos
Maia Thomas stars as Crystal: a mother, a lover, a stripper and a cancer patient. Confronting death, she grasps at life and faces herself and the ones she loves without deception.
Perception

In the public housing commission estate of Pendle Vale, a single mum and her daughter do it tough, until one day a witch decides to change their fortune.