Anya Beyersdorf is an actress turned writer/director. As an emerging and talented screenwriter, she has been an Academy (The Oscars) Nicholl Fellowships semi-finalist (2016), was shortlisted twice for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab (2016, 2017) and has won an Australian Writer's Guild (AWGIE) Award for her writing (2015). In 2016 she was selected by the Weinstein Company for and won one of the highly competitive inaugural Lexus Australia Short Film Fellowships - to write and direct a new short film which will premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in 2017. Other films she has written have played in competition at Flickerfest, Palm Springs International Shorts Fest, Rhode Island Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival and the Tropfest shortlist among others. She has a Masters of Film (majoring in screenwriting) from the University of Sydney and is a current Doctoral candidate at the University of Sydney - also in screenwriting. She is a founding member of Gifthorse Collective - a Sydney filmmaker collective dedicated to creating and producing unique and unusual screen stories.www.gifthorsefilms.com