Anya Beyersdorf

Anya is an AWGIE award-winning screenwriter based in Sydney, Australia.

Anya is currently writing the film adaptation of Tara Winkler’s book HOW (NOT) TO START AN ORPHANAGE with Sinet Chan and Tara Winkler – a true story set in Cambodia with Jennifer Peedom directing; and THE SIGNALS (feature film) for Truant and XYZ with Premium fund funding from Screen Australia.

For TV, Anya wrote episode 5 of FIRES for producers Tony Ayres, Andrea Denholm, Liz Watts and showrunner Belinda Chayko for the ABC and NBC International; wrote on EDEN for Stan with Bryan Elsey (SKINS) and Every Cloud; as well as an episode of the much-anticipated Margot Robbie-led SHAKESPEARE NOW TV series in development from the ABC/Hoodlum/Lucky Chap with Rachel Ward directing. She has also been in development rooms on a number of premium TV series, working with companies such as Goalpost, Porchlight, Made Up Stories, Matchbox, Jungle and Fremantle Media amongst others.

Anya’s UK/AUS co-production short film IT’S ME was commissioned by producer Lee Magiday (THE LOBSTER, THE FAVOURITE) starring Maxine Peake and Russell Tovey and premiered at the Manchester Film Festival in 2020.

Anya won an Australian Writer’s Guild (AWGIE) Award for the first short film she wrote PARADISE (2014). She was one of four inaugural winners of the Lexus Short Film Fellowship at Sydney Film Festival for HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN (2017). Anya’s original feature script SERPENTINE was a semi-finalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowships (Oscars 2016), was shortlisted for the Sundance Labs and Austin Film Fest and featured on the inaugural “Aussie” Black List in 2018).