Matthew Holmes

Matthew Holmes is an Aussie filmmaker with a knack for doing things his own wild way. The dude kicked things off in animation—stop-motion, sculpting, storyboards, all that jazz—working for Anifex in Adelaide (that’s a legit animation house, by the way). Matthew didn’t just dip his toes in the indie pool, he cannonballed in. He scraped together his own cash to make his first feature, ‘Twin Rivers’, back in 2007. And get this—Rolf De Heer (yeah, the ‘Bad Boy Bubby’ legend) jumped in to mentor him and basically helped push the film over the finish line with his usual crew. Not your everyday indie director origin story. Then came ‘The Legend of Ben Hall’. Started as a short, which totally blew up with crowdfunding, and then somehow ballooned into a full-on feature. Greg Mclean (‘Wolf Creek’ guy) jumped on as executive producer. Awards started rolling in, critics actually noticed, and suddenly the film was out in 22 countries. People dug it for being properly legit about Aussie history—not some cheesy, over-glamorized version. Next up, ‘The Cost’ in 2023—another indie, this time tackling revenge in a way that had critics and audiences buzzing. Now he’s onto ‘Fear Below’ with Hermione Corfield (yep, from the UK), which is in post. Not slowing down, he’s got a laundry list of scripts cooking: a WWII survival flick, psychological horror, monster movie, Greek myth reimagined, and a massive bushranger drama series. All this from Adelaide, still flying solo, still keeping it real.