Anna Broinowski

Anna is a filmmaker, writer and rock violinist who likes to explode cliches about the East. She toured her bilingual play The Gap to Tokyo, and uncovered Japan’s queer, drug and Otaku subcultures in her first documentary, Hell Bento!! Subsequent films include Forbidden Lie$ (about hoax-author Norma Khouri), Helen’s War (about anti-nuclear crusader Dr. Helen Caldicott), and Aim High In Creation! (about the cinematic genius of North Korea’s late Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il). Anna’s films have won the Writer’s Guild of America Best Non-fiction Screenplay, the Rome Film Festival ‘Cult’ Prize, a Walkley Award, Best Director at Films Des Femmes, an Al Jazeera Golden Award, three AFIs, and a Moscow Film Critics’ prize: which is a hollowed out wooden elephant. The hollow is for burning bad reviews. Anna was born in Tokyo and grew up in the Philippines, Burma, Iran and Canberra. At 19, she hitchiked to Darwin and was kidnapped by truckies. This made her drop Law and do what she does now.