Amiel Courtin-Wilson

A M I E L C O U R T I N – W I L S O N B I O G R A P H Y

Having directed over 20 short films and five feature length films, Amiel Courtin-Wilson is considered one of the most innovative and distinctive directors of his generation working in Australia today.

At age 19, Amiel Courtin-Wilson's debut feature documentary, CHASING BUDDHA premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000 and won many awards including best documentary at the Sydney Film Festival.

Amiel went on to direct work for Opera Australia, Chunky Move contemporary dance company, and has also exhibited his video art internationally.
His films have screened at the National Gallery of Victoria, The Museum of Natural History in New York, The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, the Gallery of New South Wales and he has given special guest lectures at UCLA in California as well as major universities across Australia since 2000.
Amiel has been a judge for major film festivals around the world as well as contributing to national and international film and art magazines and journals since 2002.

After forming the production entity Flood Projects in 2008, Amiel’s feature documentary, BASTARDY won the Best Documentary Jury Prize at the 2009 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards (FCCA), Best Documentary at the ATOM Awards, was released theatrically to huge critical acclaim across Australia and was nominated for three Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards.

Amiel’s short film CICADA premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as part of Directors’ Fortnight in 2009 and won a slew of awards in Australia and internationally.

Amiel's prose has been published in the short story anthology Ten Years of Things that Didn't Kill Us (Paroxysm Press 2008), his public installations under the moniker of OXO OVO were published in the worldwide survey of street art "The Art of Rebellion" (Gingko Press, 2003) and his first solo exhibition of drawings was at Utopian Slumps Gallery in Melbourne in 2009. In 2012 Amiel collaborated with the Black Lung Theatre Company and a highly esteemed group of East Timorese artists and musicians on the theatre production DOKU RAI which premiered at Darwin International Arts Festival to great critical acclaim.

His dramatic feature film debut HAIL had its international premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival (Orrizonti, 2011) and has screened at dozens of festivals around the world including Rotterdam, Istanbul, Karlovy Vary, and Munich. HAIL also won many awards internationally, as well as The Age Critics Award for best Australian feature at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Amiel's most recent feature film RUIN won the Special Jury Prize in the Orrizonti competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2013- the first Australian feature film in twenty years to win an award at Venice. Already screening at nearly thirty film festivals, RUIN also won best Cinematography at the Tomorrow Film Festival in Moscow, Best Editing at the 56th Asia-Pacific Film Festival and Best Direction at the Fantaspoa Film Festival in Brazil.

Amiel was also recently commissioned to create a short film for the 70th Anniversary of the Venice Film Festival as part of a project called "Venice Future Reloaded" alongside directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Monte Hellman, Atom Egoyan and Paul Schrader.

Most recently Amiel exhibited a short video installation entitled “The Death of a King” at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney in early 2014 as part of a Yoko Ono retrospective entitled EXPERIMENTAL UNIVERSE.

Amiel is currently developing several feature films as well as co-writing and co-producing WARM BLOOD- the directorial debut of Rick Charnoski to be shot in Modesto California in mid 2015.