Josie Hess (they/them) is a writer/director from Gunaikurnai Land who works across documentary and narrative formats.  

Their work has been recognized by The Guardian, The Age, The Feed,  ABC News, Filmmaker Magazine and Art Link among others.

In 2024, their latest work, Ashes To Aftermath was released, produced for Environment Victoria. In 2023, Josie directed After the Smoke for The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as part of the Climate Shorts Initiative. After The Smoke premiered at the Sydney International Film Festival and was nominated for the Sustainability Screen Award. 

Across 2021-2022 Josie was in the inaugural cohort for the Art + Impact fellowship through Doc Society, as well as directing short film The House of Woland which screened at Berlin, Amsterdam and San Francisco Porn Film festivals. 

In 2020, they co-directed ‘All of Me’ (co-directed by Morgana Muses) a short documentary about a sex worker with cerebral palsy, which has screened around the world, including at Berlin Porn Film Festival.

Also 2020, their next documentary project ‘Life After Coal’ was selected to take part in ‘The Pitch Lab’, an initiative by AFTRS, The Doc Society and AIDC. The project was the recipient of the philanthropic development and production grants through the Lab via the MaiTri Foundation’s Story Program. This project evolved into the successful impact campaign Life After Coal, which ran events in 2024, including the creation of a digital archive for oral histories in 2024.

Josie co-directed their first feature documentary Morgana in 2019 (co-directed by Isabel Peppard) which premiered internationally at Fantasia International Film Festival, nationally at Melbourne International Film Festival and won Best Independent Documentary at the Gold Coast Film Awards and San Fran Indie Fest.

Also in 2019 they produced short animation The Grave of Saint Oran (Dir. Jim Batt) written and narrated by Neil Gaiman which premiered at Fantasia and has screened nationally at SIFF and MIFF and as part of Flickrfests nation wide tour.