Katharine O'Brien(I)

Director and screenwriter Katharine OBrien was born in Santa Barbara, CA. She studied English at Wellesley College and Film Directing at Columbia University. Her first film Lost Transmissions, starring Simon Pegg, Juno Temple and Alexandra Daddario, was produced by Pulse Films and premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2019. Lost Transmissions was hailed by the New York Times as "fresh fuel for the Los Angeles music scene." Lost Transmissions presciently examined the connection between mental illness and homelessness. Katharine also co-wrote The Automatic Hate, starring Joseph Cross, Adelaide Clemens, and Deborah Ann Woll, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in 2015 and played top international festivals. Her films are often of a wide scope, with stories that link various social strata. Her world view Katharine has attributed to her varied upbringing - her father was a police officer in South Boston and her stepfather a prominent art dealer in New York who retired to Santa Barbara. Katharine is close to nature, raised on ranches and having gone to a rustic mountain school in the Santa Ynez Valley. Stylistically, her stories often have a sense of supernatural and mystical phenomena underlying hard reality. Dedicated to community and the arts, Katharine has served on the boards of the Cinefamily Foundation and LACMA. She currently resides in Mallorca, Spain.