Carolyn Saunders
- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Writer-director Carolyn Saunders grew up as a nomadic air force brat. She can still pack a suitcase at Mach 2 and frequently tells stories about identity and home.
Carolyn is the 2022 winner of the Writers Guild of Canada's Sondra Kelly Award, and an Academy Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalist in 2021. She was selected for the Meryl Streep/Nicole Kidman Writer's Lab and her sci-fi feature script Island West is on Coverfly's Red List, in the Top 1% of nearly 80,000 screenplays.
Three times shortlisted for the Sundance Development Track with series and feature projects, Carolyn works across genres. She co-wrote Amazon's feminist take on Ted Bundy, the critically acclaimed series Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer. Her dystopian short On Island West won the Directors UK Challenge Alexa and was shot in Cornwall during lockdown. Her short drama Sundown, about a mixed race Canadian indigenous soldier disconnected from his identity, debuted at the 2021 Carmarthen Bay Film Festival.
In 2017, Carolyn made her directorial debut with the microbudget thriller The Wasting. It played to sold-out theatres, winning multiple festival awards, followed by a Canadian theatrical release and distribution in six countries.
Carolyn's female-led sci-fi thriller series pilot Invisible, co-written with Shelagh McLeod, was a finalist at The Writers Lab UK 2021 and is in development with Shaftesbury. She story-edited McLeod's 2019 Richard Dreyfuss-starring Astronaut and wrote episodes of the Canadian Screen Award winning comedy webseries Tokens.
A dual Canadian-UK citizen, Carolyn is an alumna of the 2021 Directors UK Inspire Mentoring scheme and Canada's Women in the Director's Chair. She sits on the Board of Directors UK.
Carolyn is stupidly in love with storytelling, her boys, troublemaking, and her black lab, Waggo.
Carolyn is the 2022 winner of the Writers Guild of Canada's Sondra Kelly Award, and an Academy Nicholl Fellowship quarterfinalist in 2021. She was selected for the Meryl Streep/Nicole Kidman Writer's Lab and her sci-fi feature script Island West is on Coverfly's Red List, in the Top 1% of nearly 80,000 screenplays.
Three times shortlisted for the Sundance Development Track with series and feature projects, Carolyn works across genres. She co-wrote Amazon's feminist take on Ted Bundy, the critically acclaimed series Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer. Her dystopian short On Island West won the Directors UK Challenge Alexa and was shot in Cornwall during lockdown. Her short drama Sundown, about a mixed race Canadian indigenous soldier disconnected from his identity, debuted at the 2021 Carmarthen Bay Film Festival.
In 2017, Carolyn made her directorial debut with the microbudget thriller The Wasting. It played to sold-out theatres, winning multiple festival awards, followed by a Canadian theatrical release and distribution in six countries.
Carolyn's female-led sci-fi thriller series pilot Invisible, co-written with Shelagh McLeod, was a finalist at The Writers Lab UK 2021 and is in development with Shaftesbury. She story-edited McLeod's 2019 Richard Dreyfuss-starring Astronaut and wrote episodes of the Canadian Screen Award winning comedy webseries Tokens.
A dual Canadian-UK citizen, Carolyn is an alumna of the 2021 Directors UK Inspire Mentoring scheme and Canada's Women in the Director's Chair. She sits on the Board of Directors UK.
Carolyn is stupidly in love with storytelling, her boys, troublemaking, and her black lab, Waggo.