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Juanita Wilson

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Juanita Wilson

Born and reared in Dublin, where she lives with her husband, film producer James Flynn, writer and director Juanita Wilson studied at NCAD and DIT before producing two critically acclaimed Irish films, Les Blair’s harrowing story of the 1981 hunger-strikes H3 and Damien O’Donnell’s heart-warming disability comedy drama Inside I’m Dancing.

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Wilson ventured further afield for her first film as director The Door, which told the story of a man burying his daughter in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Drama at the 2009 awards and won the IFTA for Short Film.

Wilson’s debut feature film As If I Am Not There, based on a non-fiction book written by Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulic, is the story of a young woman who takes a teaching job in a small Serbian village and gets caught up in the ethnic cleansing that devastated the area during the Balkan War of the early 1990s. The film won the Silver Pyramid at the Cairo International Film Festival followed by the awards for Best Film, Best Director and Best Script at the 2011 Irish Film and Television Awards.

Also in 2011, Wilson appeared in Variety’s prestigious Top Ten Directors To Watch, the only woman included in the list.

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