RISING TALENT 2024: CINEMATOGRAPHERS

RISING TALENT 2024

The IF Rising Talent list for 2024 is made up of people we think will shift and lead our industry into the future. Some are newer faces, others have recently stepped into senior roles where they’re now making waves. We think you’ll want to work with all of them. We put this list together through a public call out and extensive insdustry outreach. This year, we had a staggering 692 names put forward. As always, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of talent that’s out there in Australia.

CINEMATOGRAPHERS

ALEX CARDY

Cinematographer Alex Cardy’s work traverses drama, documentary and moving-image installation. Her recent long-form projects include Stan’s Year Of, the ABC’s The Search for the Palace Letters, and The Defenders for Amazon, winner of the Audience Award at Sydney Film Festival 2023.

With a passion for hybrid and instinctual filmmaking, Cardy’s work on short doc ZEF (dir. Jessica Lawton) won her an ACS Gold Award in 2020. In the same year she won a Bronze ACS Award for her collaboration with artist Patricia Piccinini, We Travel Together, the centrepiece of Rising Festival 2022.

Cardy’s early work as 2nd unit DOP for cinematographer Ari Wegner on Michael Cody and Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s feature drama Ruin, selected for the Venice Film Festival, led her to seek out collaborations with directors interested in intimate and visually bold drama. Many of her short films have been selected at top-tier festivals, including Bonnie Moir’s We’re Not Here, Madeleine Gottlieb’s You and Me, Before and After and Rhys Graham’s Multiply, which also won her ACS Gold.

Cardy is attached to features The Tides, directed by Graham, and Sweet Milk Lake, directed by Harvey Zielinski, among other projects. She is also one of the founders of Sissy Screens, an organisation and publication championing queer screen culture.

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SEAN RYAN

Sean Ryan comes to cinematography with a background in VFX supervision.

Ryan recently completed shooting his first feature as cinematographer, The Moogai, for director Jon Bell and Causeway Films. The Indigenous psychological thriller premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the Midnight program and has been selected for SXSW in March. Ryan also shot the AACTA-nominated short film of the same name, which was awarded Best Australian Short Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival 2020 and the Midnight Shorts Jury Award at SXSW 2021.

Other notable shorts include Eliza Scanlen’s How Can I Help you? and Joanna Griffiths’ Generations of Men, which won him a Gold ACS Award last year.

In addition to his work in narrative, Ryan has shot a wealth of music videos and commercials for such clients as Volvo, Samsung, Vodafone, Apple, Audi, R.M Williams and Fiji Tourism.

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GRÉGOIRE LIÈRE

Grégoire Lière is a French-Australian cinematographer working across film, television, documentary, commercials, and music videos. He studied cinematography at AFTRS and the École Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière in Paris, and is currently based in Sydney.

His short film Snare was nominated for an AACTA in 2019 and had its world premiere in competition at SXSW. Directed by Madeleine Gottlieb, Snare went on to screen at Tribeca, Seattle International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival.

Lière then reunited with Gottlieb on the SBS Digital Original series Latecomers, his first broadcast credit. Latecomers screened in competition at Séries Mania and is nominated for an AACTA Award.

Last year saw Lière shoot his first feature film, Stan’s Jones Family Christmas, directed by Stef Smith. Other recent credits include the Netflix documentary ONEFOUR: Against All Odds, directed by Gabriel Gasparinatos, which had its world premiere at SXSW Sydney.

Lière is currently in pre-production on feature film All Manner of Good for director James Litchfield.

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MICHAEL TESSARI

Michael Tessari is a South Australian cinematographer working on narrative, commercials and music videos.

Recent work includes the sci-fi thriller Monolith (dir. Matt Vesely), which won an ACS Gold Award and was also nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in Cinematography at the 2023 SXSW festival in Austin.

Tessari was recognised by the ACS with the Cliff Ellis award for Emerging Cinematographer of the Year in 2013 and the Milton Ingerson Award for the best in Show, entry of the Year, at the 2017 awards in South Australia.

Following this, he has worked consistently on narrative long-form projects, starting with horror feature Awoken. The Netflix Original series Gymnastics Academy followed, and then Monolith, which screened at festivals such as SXSW, Adelaide Film Festival, FreightFest, Bifan, Melbourne International Film Festival and Sitges.

Last year ended with Tessari wrapping production on Kelly Schilling’s With or Without You, set to premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2024.

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JACLYN PATERSON

Jaclyn Paterson is a Filipino-Australian cinematographer from south-west Sydney, with a background in digital media (College of Fine Arts/UNSW Art & Design) and colour grading (AFTRS). Her early career was spent in art photography and post-production, encompassing editorial and commercial digital composite before moving into film as a colourist.

With beginnings in music video and live music film experimentation, Paterson is now a cinematographer working in short and long-form narrative film. Her narrative debut as DOP was on the AACTA-nominated Mud Crab, which won her Best Cinematography at the 2023 St Kilda

Film Festival 2023. This was followed with short We Used to Own Houses, which premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival 2023. Her upcoming projects include feature film Colossus, directed by David Robinson-Smith, as well as multiple short films currently in development.