Cate Shortland - Infinite Women

Born: 10 August 1968, Australia
Died: NA
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: NA

This biography is republished from The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Written by Kathryn Mcleod, National Film and Sound Archive. See below for full attribution.

Cate Shortland was born in Temora, New South Wales on the 10 August 1968 and is one of Australia’s most acclaimed and promising filmmakers. She received a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Sydney in 1991 and a Graduate Diploma in Directing from the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in 2000.

Shortland wrote and directed three short films, Pentuphouse (1998), Flowergirl (1999) and Joy (2000), before she began directing for the TV series’ Bad Cop, Bad Cop (2002-2003) and The Secret Life of Us (2001-2003). Her first feature film Somersault (2004) was hugely successful. It premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and was released in over 15 countries. The film received 13 Australian Film Institute including awards for Best Direction, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film, six IF Awards including Best Feature Film, Best Direction and Best Script, two Australian Writer’s Guild Awards including Best Original Feature Film, five Film Critics Circle of Australia awards including Best Film and Best Director, and Best Dramatic Feature, Breakthrough Director Award at the Miami Film Festival.

Further success followed with her second feature film Lore (2012) which she co-wrote with Robin Mukherjee and adapted from the novel Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert. Lore is set in Germany and while Shortland doesn’t speak German, she did insist that Lore was made as a German language film. It won the Critics Award for Best Film at the Hamburg Film Festival, Best Film at the Stockholm Film Festival, the Feature Film Award at the Hessian Film Awards and the audience prize at the Locarno Film Festival.