Jennifer Kent

Her second film, The Nightingale, deals with murder and revenge in 1825 Tasmania.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film garnered an approval rating of 86%, based on 234 reviews.

When asked whether she would be doing a sequel to The Babadook, Kent said that she "will never allow any sequel to be made, because it's not that kind of film. I don't care how much I'm offered, it's just not going to happen."

Kent has at least two feature films currently in various states of development.

Jennifer Kent (born 5 March 1969) is an Australian director, screenwriter, and former actress.

She graduated in 1991 from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Performing Arts (Acting).

In 2002 von Trier allowed her to assist him as part of a directing attachment on the set of his film Dogville (2003) starring Nicole Kidman.

In 2005 Kent directed her short film Monster, which was screened at over 50 festivals around the world, including Telluride, Montreal World, and Slamdance film festivals, SXSW, and Aspen Shortsfest.

In 2006 Kent directed an episode of Two Twisted, an Australian series following in the tradition of The Twilight Zone.

She is best known for writing and directing the psychological horror film The Babadook (2014).

In 2014 she adapted her short into a feature-length film The Babadook starring Essie Davis whom Kent had known through drama school.

The film tells the story of a single mother played by Davis who must confront a sinister presence in her home while dealing with the death of her husband.

Kent Explains "[she] was always quite fascinated by people who could suppress really dark, deep, painful experiences and [she] wanted to explore the idea that perhaps pushing down on those terrible experiences is harder than facing them,".The Babadook premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival in the prestigious Midnight section.

The film was quickly picked up for distribution in the U.S. by IFC Films.

Kent did five drafts of the feature script, received most of her funding from the Australian government (South Australian Film Corporation), then conducted a Kickstarter campaign to help raise US$30,000 to pay for set construction.

The Babadook received widespread critical acclaim, with The Exorcist director William Friedkin tweeting that he'd never seen a more terrifying film, and doubled its budget with $4.9 million in the worldwide box office.

The Film won other awards including: New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First Film (2014), Empire Award for Best Horror (2015), AACTA Award for Best Film (2015), AACTA Award for Best Direction (2015), AACTA Award for Best Original Screenplay (2015), and the AACTA Byron Kennedy Award (2020).

Kent has been vocal in the press about the lack of female directors in horror cinema.

"It will shift, as the world shifts. Women do love watching scary films. It's been proven, and they’ve done all the tests. The demographics are half men, and half women. And we know fear. It's not like we can't explore the subject."

Kent met with executives at Warner Bros. in late 2014 to talk about possibly directing the Wonder Woman film, a job which eventually went to Patty Jenkins.

Kent's first feature-length film ''The Babadook", is a supernatural horror film, written and directed by Jennifer Kent. It displays how grief can engulf someone's life completely. The mother, played by Essie Davis, struggles throughout the film with grief, anxiety, and how incredibly hard motherhood can be. Her son, Sam, played by Noah Wiseman has behavioral issues which seem to stem from the single-mother household. One day, the unsuspecting family receives a scary children's book about a supernatural being called "The Babadook". After, receiving the book the family goes through many horrifying encounters until it reaches a boiling point.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approved rating of 98% with its 242 reviews.

In late 2014, Kent announced that, due to popular demand, a limited edition of the Mister Babadook pop-up book featured in her film The Babadook would be published in 2015.

Kent wrote the book in collaboration with illustrator Alex Juhasz, who had created the prop book used in the film.

The book sold out its run of 6,200 copies.

One of her scripts, Grace, won the Prix Du Scenario for unproduced scripts at the Cinéma des Antipodes festival at Saint Tropez, which presents films from Australia and New Zealand, but Kent said in October 2014, "The story of Grace was very much what I ended up making with The Babadook."

Kent said a project, a "surreal drama" about death and letting go set in Australia, has some funding for development.

In a promotional interview for Kent's 2015 film, The Babadook, lead actress, Essie Davis, explained that Kent was in the year above her at NIDA and was "[an] eerily phenomenal actress ... the girl that was obviously the best girl at the whole school."

Kent began her career as an actress, working primarily in television.

She was a main cast member of Murder Call, from creator Hal McElroy, playing Constable, Dee Suzeraine, in all 31 episodes of the series.

She also appeared in several episodes of other Australian TV series such as All Saints, Police Rescue and Above the Law.

Kent also had a small role in Babe: Pig in the City and The New Adventures of Black Beauty.

She has also been an acting teacher for 13 years at major institutions such as NIDA and the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS).

After losing interest in acting, Kent was inspired after seeing Dancer in the Dark to pursue a career as a filmmaker.

She wrote to the director Lars von Trier, asking to study under him and explaining that she found the idea of film school repellent.

The Babadook script won the Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting at the 2015 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.

Her second film, The Nightingale (2018), premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Lion.

Kent was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

She says that she put on her first play when she was seven and also wrote stories.

In her late teens, she chose acting as she "wasn't really aware at that stage that women could direct films".