Biography
Carolyn Saunders is an award-winning writer and director of fiction films and documentary. As the mixed/Roma child of a British-born fighter pilot and a Canadian mother, raised on air force bases around the world, she frequently explores themes of identity and home. Carolyn is a finalist for the 2019 Meryl Streep/Nicole Kidman Writer's Lab with her feature script Island West, prepping for an early 2020 shoot. Her debut microbudget feature, The Wasting, was released in 2017. She wrote and directed the arthouse horror about anorexia and family identity. It played to sold-out theatres and won Best Feature at the Vittorio Veneto Film Festival, one of Italy’s top festivals for youth film. It had a Canadian theatrical release, and distribution in multiple countries. Carolyn story-edited the 2019 Richard Dreyfuss feature Astronaut, and wrote a high-end limited documentary series for Amazon, scheduled for broadcast in late 2019. Other writing highlights include the feature doc A Sicilian Dream, nominated for Best Story at Nice International Film Festival, and winner of Best Documentary at the Indianapolis Film Festival. Her feature comedy script Drilled won Honourable Mention at the Praxis Screenwriting Awards, and she wrote and story edited the hit Canadian comedy web series Tokens. Carolyn was previously a film location scout and a writer/creative producer for doc series on Discovery, History and Science Channel. She is an alumna of Women In the Director’s Chair (WIDC), and a member of Directors UK, the Writers Guild of Canada, and Film Fatales.
