Short Film Judges

Laura Waters

Laura Waters founded Princess Pictures in 2003 driven by a vision to support creative ideas, pushing audiences to see the world in new ways.

Born in the US, she studied at Boston University and produced current affairs and documentary television in London and LA. She’s produced all five of Chris Lilley’s ABC/HBO/BBC comedy series, We Can Be Heroes, Summer Heights High, Angry Boys, Ja’mie: Private School Girl, and Jonah From Tonga, as well as Chris’s most recent series, Lunatics for Netflix.

Laura has overseen the production of a range of groundbreaking series with recent productions including ABC ME’s ‘vlogumentary’ series My Year 7 Life and My Year 12 Life; the award-winning documentary, The Graceland Happiness Project; Foxtel’s sketch comedy show Open Slather; landmark series from John Clarke, Sporting Nation and The Sounds of Aus; Jonn Safran’s look at cross-cultural love, Race Relations and his documentary on the 2016 Australian vote The Goddam Election!; Peter Helliar’s acclaimed comedy anthology It’s a Date and feature film I Love You Too; Australia’s first Aboriginal sitcom, 8MMM; and Outland, a comedy series about gay science fiction fans. Currently, she is delivering a unique comedy/documentary/musical series to the ABC written by Andrew Hansen and Chris Taylor from The Chaser and developing as many mind-boggling things as she can handle.

Recently Princess partnered with the acclaimed animation company Bento Box to not only produce original Australian adult animation but also establish a studio based in Melbourne. Currently, Princess Bento is in production on several animated series, including Yolo and Smiling Friends for Adult Swim, and Koala Man for Hulu.

Laura has won two TV Logie awards, one AFI award, the NYC Webfest, and been nominated for dozens of international television awards for various Princess Pictures productions.

Luke Eve

Luke Eve is an Australian screen director and producer. Originally a freelance photographer, he moved into directing music videos and commercials before shifting into film and television. Luke was the winner of Tropfest 2005 with his film Australian Summer. In 2014, he created, produced, and directed the ground-breaking, critically acclaimed series Low Life, a black comedy about depression starring Henry Nixon and Claire van der Boom.

In 2017 he directed and produced the follow up series, High Life which was Executive Produced by Stephen Fry and stars Odessa Young with music by Sarah Blasko. The series has won over 30 major awards including Best Digital Original at C21 Content London and was also nominated for an AACTA Award.

During the 2020 pandemic Luke created, produced, directed and acted in one of the world’s first multi-national lockdown series, CANCELLED. The series produced in Australia, Spain and Argentina launched on Facebook Watch and has had over 2 million views.

In September 2020 Luke released his feature film debut I Met A Girl, starring Brenton Thwaites and Lily Sullivan- the film showcases an aspiring musician embarking on an epic, cross country journey to find the woman of his dreams- who may be all in his head. The film had its World Premiere Screening at the 25th Busan International Film Festival.