Director | Writer Kelly Holmes is inspired to make genre films that have a real emotional connection with her audience. She has developed an aesthetic approach to cinema, focussed on creating detailed worlds. Kelly is also interested in stories that push the boundaries of psychological reality and/or fit in her macabre view of the world.

​

Her shorts have won multiple awards at international film festivals and she has received Creative England/BFI funding, Creative Skillset funding, the Rafford Scholarship, television commissions, and won prizes in competitions such as the Enter the Pitch, and has been chosen for talent development on several schemes including the Reykjavik International Film Festival Talent Lab and BFI Network X BAFTA Crew.

​

Kelly has just completed her Creative England Emerging Talent/BFI and France 3 funded short ATTRITION, a WW1 supernatural drama set in the 1915 gas attacks. The film stars Edward Hogg (Taboo), Jack Roth (Bohemian Rhapsody), Lewis MacKinnon (Victoria) and Jack Parry-Jones (Our Girl). ATTRITION was broadcast on Armistice weekend on national French television in 2018.

 

Her Scottish short FAMILY PORTRAIT, a Victorian family drama about death portrait photography won the Paris Courts Devant postproduction prize, including being broadcast 3 times on France 3 television. And it has screened in over 50 film festivals winning 12 international film awards.

​

Kelly has also been mentored by director James Kent (Testament of Youth) and by director/writer Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, Duke of Burgandy) and also shadowed Douglas McKinnon (Doctor Who, Outlander) on Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.

 

Kelly is attached to two feature scripts, the first a 1960s menopausal body horror in development with BFI Network, and second a dystopian plague drama set in the far north of Scotland. She is also in development with Blazing Griffin on a single TV drama based on a true-life story. 

​

She holds a BA and MA in Film Theory and MFA in Advanced Film Directing. She has also taught film theory and practice for 14 years as a Senior Lecturer at institutions including the University of Derby and works on BFI Film Academy Residentials in Edinburgh teaching filmmaking to 16-19 year olds.