For 14 years, I had a secret filmmaking career.

I made around 50 comedy films about the partners of a global consulting firm. My job was to investigate their lives, uncover their eccentricities, insecurities and contradictions, and turn them into fictional versions of themselves. I became fascinated by the gap between who people really are and who they think they're supposed to be.

Inside the company, the films had a devoted audience. Outside it, almost nobody knew they existed.

Every so often, I'd emerge from the shadows to make something of my own.

I co-created and directed two seasons of THE JUSTICE LEASE, a comedy series about superheroes struggling to survive life in an Australian share house. Made on a shoestring budget, its first season won the inaugural Viewster Online Film Festival and a US$70,000 grand prize, earning coverage in The Hollywood Reporter. The series went on to win awards at LA WebFest and Melbourne WebFest.

My short film GLEN screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2021 and gave me something I'd been chasing for years: the experience of making a film that looked and felt exactly as I'd imagined.

But somewhere along the way, I'd become so accustomed to telling other people's stories that it barely occurred to me that I had one of my own.

My fascination with identity eventually led me somewhere unexpected: science fiction.

In 2024, my screenplay for SELF LOVE won first place in Slamdance's Short Screenplay Competition, selected from more than 4,000 submissions. I went on to direct the film, about a man who attempts to euthanise his malfunctioning clone, only to discover that the frightened, childlike creature he's trying to destroy embodies everything he was taught to suppress about himself.

In 2026, the same screenplay won the Australian Writers' Guild's John Hinde Award for Excellence in Science Fiction Writing. I'm now developing SELF LOVE into a feature film.

What began as a career making people laugh at exaggerated versions of themselves has gradually become an exploration of what happens when we're forced to confront who we really are... and whether we can learn to accept what we find.

And in a twist that feels a little on-the-nose, after spending so much of my career helping other people feel seen, I'm only now learning what it means to be seen myself.