Lydia Rui is an award-winning Chinese Australian writer / director based in the UK. She won the 2020 Flickerfest Emerging Female Filmmaker Award and has been Australian Directors Guild Award nominated twice. She is a recent MA of Directing Fiction NFTS graduate, with support from the Screen Australia Enterprise and Ian Potter Cultural Trust Fund. She grew up between mainland China, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore, before graduating with a BFA in Film & TV from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. At the age of 23, she travelled through North America and Europe as the videographer for Beyoncé’s Mrs. Carter World Tour, before returning to Australia to work at Exit Films.

Her short films as writer and director have screened at Oscar and BAFTA-qualifying festivals such as Tribeca Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Flickerfest International Short Film Festival, DOC NYC, and been Vimeo Staff Picked.

Her transnational background informs a nuanced and versatile approach to filmmaking. Her work is often character driven and subjective. She loves strong, visceral visuals, but always in service of story and theme. Ultimately, cross-cultural representation and a love for the uniting power of cinematic storytelling remains at the forefront of her work.

In Development 

Counting Cards (Screenplay, Torino Film Lab)

The Island (Pulse)

Short Films

Virile (2023)

Nome and The Worm (2021)

Beneath the Roses (2021)

Prom Night (2021)

This Perfect Day (2021)

Touching is Teaching (2021)