An award-winning film director & writer and Honours graduate of the esteemed National Film School IADT Dún Laoghaire, Ciarán Hickey’s short film credits include The Boy Murder (2015), DLR’s The Lighthouse (2018), Just Fine (2018), Terrible Things (2021), and Screen Ireland’s Callus (2023). With a penchant for imaginative genre storytelling focused on otherworldly elements mingled with searing reality-based drama, his work has shown all over the world at various prestigious international film festivals such as LA Shorts, Sitges, Telluride Horror, Frightfest, Camerimage, Filmquest, Fantaspoa, Brussels International Fantastic Fest – as well as across his native Ireland with screenings at the Galway Film Fleadh, Dublin International Film Festival, Fastnet Film Festival, Cork International Film Festival, and the Richard Harris Film Festival to name but a few.

In 2016 Ciarán was awarded ‘Best Student Director’ for The Boy Murder at the first inaugural Young Directors Awards (now the Emerging Directors Awards) in Dublin. His next project – children’s fantasy short The Lighthouse ­­– was selected for funding through the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown First Frames initiative in 2017 and would go on to enjoy a generous festival run both at home and abroad across 2018 and 2019. Within this same window his no-budget drama short Just Fine premiered at the Cork International Film Festival before being selected for the RTÉ Player. Separate to the world of film Ciarán was also awarded First Place as part of the Nahemi-Kodak Student Commercial Awards in 2015 for his Moneysupermarket spec ad The Heist.

In 2021 Ciarán completed work on his self-funded sci-fi/horror apocalypse short film Terrible Things. The project would go on to receive 19 festival selections across 2021/2022 before debuting publicly on streaming platform ALTER, amassing over 700K views (as of March 2024) and a wealth of positive online interaction. In January 2024 Terrible Things was added to the Arrow Player as part of the renowned Arrow Video Library.

Following the success of Terrible Things, Ciarán acquired funding for his folk-horror short Callus as part of Screen Ireland’s Focus Shorts Scheme in late-2022. As of March 2024, and following its premiere with the 35^th Edition of the revered Galway Film Fleadh in summer 2023, Callus has been selected for over 15 festivals globally – garnering an array of awards and nominations including 8 individual accolades with the European Cinematography Awards as part of their July 2023 competition. The short is expected to continue its festival run into early-2025.

Moving now into 2024 and beyond Ciarán is hard at work on an array of exciting new projects – including a debut feature film.