Kerry Kolbe

Kerry grew up in northern England in the market town of Ulverston. After completing a psychology degree and training as a journalist she worked as a reporter on a local newspaper in Barrow-in-Furness before setting up a filmmaking charity with a childhood friend. Alongside producing a string of award-winning shorts, throughout her twenties Kerry grew her company, creating industry jobs and raising over £5m to provide access to filmmaking for people from deprived communities, alongside producing a string of shorts that won prizes and screened all over the world; in 2013 THE GERMAN WHO CAME TO TEA, a short documentary she produced and directed, won Best Film at the Hot Springs International Documentary Festival, qualifying for the Oscars.

After completing the Clore Leadership Programme and a placement at Kudos Film and TV, in 2014 Kerry headed to Los Angeles where she spent three years studying Screenwriting and Script Development at UCLA. During her time there she was a BAFTA LA Newcomer, was awarded the Laurel Hummel Screenwriting Scholarship and served a three-month internship at Valhalla Pictures.

Kerry went on to attend the National Film and Television School, graduating with an MA in Screenwriting in 2019. Her graduation feature SWALLOW recently won the Cinestory Feature Fellowship and took second place in the UCLA Extension Feature Film Writing Competition.

Kerry was a participant in Film Hub North’s ScriptLab and is now taking part in the BBC Writer’s Room Northern Voices scheme, through which she’s working with a BBC script editor to write a TV pilot. She is also working on a film project with BBC Drama and is a writer for the VR games company Maze Theory.