·April 24, 2026
IF Rising Talent 2026 Directors. Top row (L-R): Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese (Photo: Kyahm Ross), Nina Buxton. Bottom row: Lucy Knox, Harry Lloyd (Photo: @lesjouesrouges), Constantine Costi.
The final category for IF Rising Talent 2026 is directors.
The list spotlights the next wave of creatives driving the local screen industry forward. They’re people with significant career momentum who we think you’ll be hearing a lot more about.
We assemble the list through a public call out, extensive industry outreach and our own editorial research, with more than 580 names put forward in total this year across all 12 categories, including more than 140 directors alone.
We know the list only scratches the surface of the remarkable talent working across Australia.
The other 11 categories:
- Actors
- Writers
- Producers
- Costume Designers
- Editors
- Cinematographers
- Composers
- Hair and makeup
- Production designers
- Sound
- Casting directors
Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese
Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs co-wrote and directed their debut feature, Lesbian Space Princess, which was selected for the Panorama section of Berlinale 2025. There, it won the 39th Teddy Award and placed second for the audience award. Its other international festival play included Annecy, Karlovy Vary, Frameline and SXSW London, while locally won the audience award at both Adelaide Film Festival and Sydney Film Festival. Lesbian Space Princess was nominated for seven AACTA awards including Best Film, and won Best Indie Film and Best Original Song.
Lesbian Space Princess was developed through the South Australian Film Corporation’s Film Lab: New Voices initiative, with funding from SAFC, Adelaide Film Festival and Screen Australia.
Varghese’s short film I’m the Most Racist Person I Know premiered in the Narrative Short Competition at SXSW Austin 2025, where it won the Special Jury Award and was selected for the Redbreast Unhidden campaign curated by actor Andrew Scott. It won Best Short Film at the 2026 AACTA Awards.
Hobb’s short, the inaugural Hanlon Larsen Fellowship film On Film, was In Competition at SXSW Sydney 2023 and won Best Animation at the South Australian Screen Awards.
Harry Lloyd
Harry Lloyd is a writer and director drawn to stories that explore identity, power, class and belonging, moving between drama, comedy and horror.
Lloyd was set-up director on SBS Digital Original series Homebodies, directing five of the six episodes. The series premiered in competition at Series Mania 2026, where it received a Special Mention and was named a “Global Breakout” by Deadline. Lloyd directed nearly 50 episodes of Fremantle’s Neighbours for Amazon Studios, with other credits including Nickelodeon’s Rock Island Mysteries, ABC’s Turn Up the Volume and TikTok vertical series CEEBS. They were a VicScreen director’s attachment on Apple Cider Vinegar with Jeffrey Walker, and directed the short film Dog Eats World, written by and starring Chika Ikogwe, which premiered at Flickerfest.
A proud trans-masc creator originally from South-West Wales, Lloyd is currently developing folk horror feature Mari Lwyd as an Australia/Wales co-production, alongside a slate spanning revenge thriller, sports drama and social satire. They won the NYC Screenwriting Challenge for short comedy and have written for ABC’s Mikki vs the World and 10’s The Project.
Constantine Costi
Constantine Costi is a Greek Cypriot-Australian director and writer working across film, opera and theatre.
His documentary following the World Porridge Making Championship, The Golden Spurtle, made its world premiere at CPH:DOX in the Next Wave competition for innovative films by emerging artists and filmmakers. It went on to screen at other international festivals including Telluride Film Festival, Energa Camerimage Festival and Zurich Film Festival, as well as Melbourne International Film Festival and Sydney Film Festival. The Golden Spurtle was awarded Best Documentary by the Australian Film Critics Association and was Letterboxd’s seventh highest rated documentary of the year worldwide in 2025.
In 2020, Costi released his first screen project, the 60-minute film A Delicate Fire for Pinchgut Opera, based on the madrigals of Barbara Strozzi. It was awarded Best Australian Feature at the Sydney Women’s Film Festival, and the ATOM Award’s Best Experimental Film.
Costi served as co-artistic director of Red Line Productions at the Old Fitz Theatre from 2020–2023. In 2026, he will direct a new production of Puccini’s La Bohème for Opera Australia and Hänsel Und Gretel + Into The Woods for State Opera of South Australia. Other recent credits include Abduction (Victorian Opera) and Sydney Festival’s Siegfried and Roy: The Unauthorised Opera.
He is currently writing his next film, a feature-length musical based on a French novella, to be produced by Film Depot.
Nina Buxton
Nina Buxton has just completed directing all six episodes of the upcoming ABC series Separated at Birth. Her other recent credits include episodes of Netflix’s Heartbreak High season three and ABC’s Dog Park.
A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Buxton is drawn to suspenseful, character-led stories with a strong female perspective.
Her short films have screened at festivals around the world including Melbourne International Film Festival, Palm Springs, Munich Film Festival and New Orleans Film Festival. Her most recent short, Bubba, premiered on opening night of Rooftop Films New York in 2025.
Buxton’s other television directing credits include The InBestigators (Netflix), Summer Love (ABC), Paper Dolls (Paramount +) and Planet Lulin (ABC), for which she was nominated for an Australian Directors Guild Award in 2024. She was also selected as director’s attachment to Jocelyn Moorhouse on Netflix’s Boy Swallows Universe.
Lucy Knox
Lucy Knox’s debut feature Hot Mother is in development, to be produced by Carver Films, Toni Collette and Oscar-winning producer of Anora, Alex Coco, with Collette and Milly Alcock attached to star.
The film is based on Knox’s 2020 short by the same name which premiered at Berlinale. It saw her nominated for an Australian Directors’ Guild (ADG) Award and was later acquired by The Criterion Channel.
Knox is a 2025 Torino Film Lab Fellow and was selected for the inaugural Square Peg Social program, led by Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen.
Her earlier short An Act of Love premiered at Sydney, receiving a Special Mention for Best Short Screenplay, and went on to win Best Direction in a Student Film at the ADG Awards and the Mona Brand Emerging Writer’s Award. In 2018, her short documentary Last Man Standing screened at Sheffield DocFest and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and was a Tropfest finalist.
In 2022, she undertook a director’s placement shadowing director Michael Gracey on Better Man. She has also produced projects, including Burlesque Boys, which won Vice and Screen Australia’s Pitch Australiana comp in 2019.
Alongside her narrative work, she directs commercial projects for clients including Google, NRMA and the Australian Government, with work recognised at Ciclope and the 1.4 Awards.
She is currently developing a slate of original film and television projects.
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