An artist with her own voice and an uncompromising instinct for thrillers and horror, Mia'Kate Russell's directorial work is marked by both darkness and at times a sly, even campy humor. Mia'Kate Russell has a gift for creating emotionally powerful stories that make viewers reflect on their own behavior, as her complex and flawed characters are forced to face the consequences of their actions. Mia strives to make devilishly engaging character-driven genre films with authenticity and social conscience.

As a writer and director, her short films have won more than 30 awards and have been shown at prestigious festivals around the world, including SITGES, Screamfest, and Shriekfest. Her first short film, "Fanny's Audition," starring Sam Johnson, won Best Short Film at the Phenom Film Festival (2012); her next short film, "Swallow," won numerous awards for makeup and special effects and was honored with a Best Film nomination at SITGES (2014); "Death by Muffin" was a finalist in the ABCs of Death 2 project and was included in the horror anthology ABCs of Death 2.5; "Liz Drives" (2017) won numerous awards at genre festivals both in Australia and abroad, including the Sydney Indie Film Festival and Monster Fest; and the award-winning "Maggie May" (2019) became a hit with audiences and critics at festivals around the world, with the latter two films each racking up more than 100,000 views on the online platform ALTER. Mia's work is featured in Alexandra Heller-Nicholas's 2018 book "1000 Women in Horror."

As a makeup and special effects artist, Russell worked regularly in the Australian film and television industry for more than a decade, heading departments on many Australian and international films, including "2040," "What If It Works," and "The Campaign of Fear," and also worked as a makeup artist on major productions, including "Nitram" and "The Leftovers."

With a bachelor's degree in theater arts, a master's in screenwriting, and extensive experience creating practical horror effects on set, she brings a high level of hands-on creativity to her films. Her IMDB profile lists more than 60 films and television projects on which she worked on makeup and special effects — of which only a few directors are women. In response, in 2011 Mia'Kate founded Make Trouble Films with the ultimate goal of writing and directing horror films that contain an underlying feminism and a social message.