Anya Beyersdorf

Anya is an award-winning screenwriter based in Sydney, Australia. Most recently Anya has adapted/written Franki a comedy feature film for Aquarius Films; and will co-write How (Not) To Start An Orphanage also for Aquarius with Sinet Chan and Tara Winkler - a true story drama set in Cambodia with Jennifer Peedom directing; and Signal (feature film) for Truant and XYZ films which have both recently received Screen Australia Premium funding. For TV, Anya is writing an episode of The Fires for producers Tony Ayres, Andrea Denholm, Liz Watts, showrunner Belinda Chayko for the ABC; Eden for Stan with Bryan Elsey (Skins) and Every Cloud; as well as an episode of the much anticipated Margot Robbie-led Shakespeare Now TV series from the ABC/Hoodlum/Lucky Chap with Rachel Ward directing. She has also been in development rooms on a number of premium TV series, working with companies such as Porchlight, Made Up Stories, Matchbox, Jungle and Fremantle Media amongst others. Her UK/AUS co-production short film It's Me for producer Lee Magiday (The Lobster, The Favourite) starring Maxine Peake and Russell Tovey premiered at the Manchester Film Festival in 2020 and continues on the international festival circuit. Anya won an Australian Writer's Guild (AWGIE) Award for the first short film she wrote Paradise (2014), which is now in development funding as a narrative podcast with the ABC. She was one of four inaugural winners of the Lexus Short Film Fellowship at Sydney Film Festival for How The Light Gets In (2017). Anya's original feature Serpentine (semi-finalist The Academy Nicholl Fellowships (2016), shortlisted Sundance Labs and Austin Film Fest and listed on the inaugural "Aussie" Black List in 2018) is in development in the US. Her original TV series My Mother, The Witch was a finalist in the AACTA Pitch: Elevate competition. Anya's other shorts have screened at Sydney Film Festival, Palm Springs International Shorts Fest, Rhode Island Film Festival, Flickerfest, and the Seattle International Film Festival among others.