Katie Holly is Managing Director of Blinder Films, where she has produced documentaries, scripted comedy, web-series, short films and feature films. Many of these have screened at numerous international festivals including Edinburgh, Seattle, Slamdance, Rotterdam, London, Toronto, Palm Springs and SXSW. Previous to Blinder, Katie was Head of Development and Production Executive for Treasure Entertainment, where she worked on films such as Man About Dog, Shrooms and The Mighty Celt.
Katie co-produced The Perverts Guide to Ideology, directed by Sophie Fiennes with Jim Wilson (Attack the Block) and Martin Rosenbaum, with finance from the BFI, Film4/More 4, the Irish Film Board, and Rooks Nest Entertainment. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013 to widespread acclaim and went on to screen in film festivals in the U.S.A., Canada, Asia, Australia and Europe including BFI London and Palm Springs before receiving a release in cinemas and on VOD.
In 2013, Katie was executive producer for JUMP, an UK/Irish co-production with finance from IFB, Northern Ireland Screen, Limelight and Molinaire. Directed by Kieron J. Walsh and produced by Brendan Byrne for Hotshot Films. JUMP stars Martin McCann, Nichola Burley and Richard Dormer and won the Cinema Without Borders 2013 Bridging the Borders Award at Palm Springs. It was released in April 2013.
Other feature credits include Citadel, a coproduction with Sigma Films that won the Midnighters Audience Award when it premiered at SXSW 2012 and has since won numerous awards at festivals worldwide; Sensation, written and directed by Tom Hall, starring Domhnall Gleeson (True Grit, Never Let Me Go), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released by Element Pictures in late 2011; and Come on Eileen from debut writer/director Finola Geraghty starring Jackie Howe, Keith Allen, Julia Davis and Noel Fielding.
Her debut feature One Hundred Mornings received a Special Jury Award at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival, an IFTA for Best Cinematography and won the inaugural Workbook Project Discovery and Distribution Award as well as awards at numerous international film festivals.
She is also an executive producer of the television shows Irish Pictorial Weekly currently in its third series and The Savage Eye, one of the most successful scripted comedy shows for national broadcaster RTÉ.
Katie’s latest production was Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship, a Jane Austen adaption starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny that is currently in cinemas internationally. Her next project will be a documentary on Grace Jones with Sophie Fiennes, due to be shot in 2016. She is a graduate of the producer training programme EAVE, was Ireland’s representative as Producer on the Move at Cannes 2010, is a member of SPI and is on the board of the Dublin Dance Festival and the Irish Film Board.