Kelly Holmes

Kelly Holmes is a writer/director from the Midlands, UK, who has had her shorts commissioned, purchased and broadcast on national French television, has won multiple awards, screened her shorts internationally at BAFTA and OSCAR qualifying festivals, and is developing features and TV drama.

She is currently developing her menopausal body horror feature film YEAR OF THE HEART with producer David Brown and Sharp House, which also received support from BFI Network with the Early Film Development Fund. YEAR OF THE HEART won the JETS Initiative ‘Most Marketable Feature’ and was selected for the Rotterdam Film Lab and Frontières International Co-Production Market in 2021. 

Her supernatural WW1 drama ATTRITION, commissioned for broadcast by France 3 Television was developed and co-funded through Creative England/BFI Emerging Talent and starred Edward Hogg (Taboo), Jack Roth (Bohemian Rhapsody), Lewis MacKinnon (Victoria) and Jack Parry-Jones (The Crown). A WW1 supernatural drama set in the 1915 Ypres gas attacks, ATTRITION has screened around the world at Oscar/Bafta qualifying festivals, winning awards, and was also 2nd place winner in the Enter The Pitch competition receiving development funding. The film was shot on location at the Khaki Devil’s trench location in Ipswich and was broadcast on France 3 Television on Armistice weekend in November 2018. 

Kelly’s Scottish short film FAMILY PORTRAIT, a Victorian family drama about death portrait photography, was shot in the historic Pollok House in Glasgow, and stars Allison McKenzie (Line of Duty) and Douglas Russell (Outlander). FAMILY PORTRAIT won the Paris Courts Devant postproduction prize, was broadcast three times on France 3 Television and has screened in over 50 film festivals, including London Short Film Festival, where Kelly was nominated for Best Female Director, and has won 12 international film awards.

She is also working as a writer/director with co-writer Chris Lindsay in development on TV single drama MANNING UP, a hard hitting a true-life story about male rape, with Glasgow indie Blazing Griffin under television executive producer Lizzie Gray (Patrick Melrose, Fortitude). And she is attached to direct TENSION, an action/thriller about the high-risk profession of tower climbing, written by Matt White and produced in Australia by Robbie Miles.

Kelly has also shadowed Douglas McKinnon on BBCs SHERLOCK: THE ABOMINABLE BRIDE, and has been previously mentored by Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio) and by James Kent (Testament of Youth). She holds a BA, MA and a MFA in Directing from Screen Academy Scotland and has taken part in talent schemes with Creative England, Skillset and Creative Alliance, has attended the Reykjavik International Film Festival Talent Lab, and shortlisted for the BBC New Director’s Doctors Scheme. She is a member of Director’s UK, Cinesisters and BFI Network x Bafta Crew and teaches both at university and for BFI Network.