Cirrus@Austlit

Australian actress and director, and descendant of pioneering Australian film producers E.J. and Dan Carroll.

Jennifer Kent worked as an actor in Australian television, after graduating from NIDA in 1991. She worked primarily in television, and is perhaps best remembered for her main cast role in Murder Call, as Constable Dee Suzeraine.

She first pursued her interest in directing with Lars von Trier, working as part of the directing attachment on Dogville (starring Nicole Kidman). After directing short films and television, she made her feature debut with The Babadook, a psychological horror film starring Essie Davis. The Babadook was an international success, debuting at the Sundance Festival and resulting in a wave of positive reviews.

Her follow-up film, The Nightingale, was an historical revenge film, set in Van Diemen's Land in 1825. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it triggered divisive responses: praise for the film-making and distress at the visceral brutality towards women and Indigenous Tasmanians.

In September 2019, it was announced that Kent would direct an adaptation of Alice + Freda Forever, a non-fiction account of a nineteenth-century American cause celebré, in which Alice Mitchell murdered her young lover Fred Ward, after Freda's mother broke off their relationship.