Lauren Cooney

Lauren is a writer, director, and actor, born and bred in London. After studying English Literature at Cambridge, she went to Clown School in Paris, and has continued to pursue interests and dynamics that are oppositional and challenging. Lauren is in development on two projects focused on the roles of men and women today: an anti-rom-com TV series which she is writing and set to star in; and an epic documentary series. Her debut short film is a guerilla-shot sci-fi called Pendulum, which was made back-packing around India, working in improvisation off a beat sheet. The end product is an ambitious cinematic short, which is currently enjoying festival success across the globe. It has its UK premiere at the Oscar-qualifying Encounters film festival in Bristol, where it was nominated for the Audience Award. Pendulum is a proof-of-concept for psychological sci-fi feature film, Retrieval, which was developed on the inaugural Modern Tales development programme supported by the BFI and Creative Skillset. Lauren has several other features in development, including Edgelands, a dystopian coming-of-age thriller aimed at a YA audience, and Banging Down Under, a bisexual comedy-drama romance, set in Australia. Additionally Lauren has completed two thirds of an experimental horror trilogy called Shut Eye (/2). Both are available on Gunpowder Sky’s Horror platform Alter. The original Shut Eye has been nominated for numerous micro film awards, and was selected to play in front of feature screenings throughout Halloween at the Genesis Cinema. Lauren’s most recent short film, Fluid, is an LGBT celebration, funded by CSSD, Signature Pictures and the Princes’ Trust, and is about to enter the festival circuit. Lauren trained as a writer-director at The Screen-Arts-Institute, and at London Film School. She recently participated on Birds Eye View’s prestigious flagship film-business programme, Filmonomics, and Screen Training Ireland’s VFX Script to Screen, and is a member of Cinesisters, the UK’s collective for female directors. As an actor, she recently filmed a guest-star role on a horror pilot for Sky TV.