Darlene Johnson(I)

Darlene Johnson hails from the east-coast Dunghutti people of the mid-north coast of NSW, Australia. She holds an MA Honours in Screenwriting and Directing from the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in Communications from the University of Technology Sydney, where she specialised in Indigenous and postcolonial cinema.

Darlene developed one of the first official Indigenous cultural protocols for SBS, establishing clear ethical guidelines for filmmakers working with Indigenous communities and stories. These frameworks continue to be used across the network today as well as in Screen Australia’s Pathways and Protocols Guidelines.

Her career as writer/director started with the internationally acclaimed short film, TWO BOB MERMAID, which was the first Indigenous Australian film to screen in competition at the Venice Film Festival where it was shortlisted for the Baby Lion Award. It won Best Australian Short film at the Australian Film Critics Circle of Australia and Best Short Film at the Asia Pacific Film Festival and screened at numerous festivals around the world.

Darlene wrote and directed the documentaries STOLEN GENERATIONS (which was nominated for an International EMMY Award and an AFI Award); STRANGER IN MY SKIN; FOLLOWING THE RABBIT-PROOF FENCE and GULPILIL - ONE RED BLOOD, a biography of the actor David Gulpilil, nominated for a LOGIE Award. Her award winning supernatural fictional drama, CROCODILE DREAMING featured the first-time pairing of legendary Aboriginal actors David Gulpilil and Tom E. Lewis. Darlene's poetic and moving portrait, RIVER OF NO RETURN, was chosen as the opening night film in 2008 at Toronto's imagineNATIVE Film Festival.

Darlene received an Australian Directors Guild Nomination for Best Direction for the independent documentary, THE REDFERN STORY. It won Best Documentary for Social and Political documentary at the ATOM Awards and was a finalist in the Walkley Awards and the Sydney Film Festival Documentary Foundation Awards.

Her AWG nominated short film BLUEY premiered at the Sydney Film Festival where it won Best Screenplay. It was also nominated fro Best Short Fiulm at the AACTA Awards and won Best Direction in a Short Film at the Australian Directors Guild Awards, going on to win 14 awards at numerous Australian and international festivals.

In 2019, Darlene won the Inaugural International Screen Scholarship in New York City. She was the first recipient of the Inaugural Shadow Directorship, an Australian Directors Guild and Screen Australia’s Gender Matters initiative.

For television, she has directed on HOME AND AWAY, THE HEIGHTS (for which she was nominated for a third ADG Award for best Director), NEIGHBOURS and BORN TO SPY. She was a director and producer's attachment on Savage River and was the 2nd Unit Director for the series. Darlene was also a writer on IRREVERENT for NBC Universal, Matchbox Pictures and Netflix.

In 2021, Darlene was the Inaugural recipient of the Deutsche Bank First Nations Creative Fellowship in partnership with the Sydney Film Festival, and the first Indigenous recipient of a grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. She has a number of feature films and TV concepts in development.