Lochlainn McKenna started his filmmaking journey studying acting in his native Cork City before swiftly moving through a variety of roles from assistant directing and editing to casting and producing (one personal life-highlight was producing two episodes of The Real Housewives of Orange County) before he eventually stumbled upon directing in 2017.

Adventurous and tumultuous weekends with his father throughout his childhood have set the grounding for a career that focuses on the minutiae of relationships and finding sincerity at the core of every life avenue.

His Best New Director gong at the Kinsale Shark Awards is among the awards he’s most proud of. Most recently he was announced as the Dublin International Film Festival’s Discovery Award Winner following in the footsteps of Barry Keoghan and Jessie Buckley.

Commercially, he’s crafted spots for Specsavers, Tesco, Guinness, Toyota, Sky and a host of other international brands too. His music video work including videos for Westlife and Keane have been viewed over a 100 million times online.

In 2020 McKenna wrote a short story entitled Guinness & Coke which was nominated for the RTÉ Francis McManus Short Story competition. The story was put on the Junior Cert Curriculum in 2021 and he has since made it into a film. The now entitled, Two For The Road, is his 3rd short film and is based on his aforementioned weekends with his father. Two For The Road is currently nominated for an IFTA and was Oscar long-listed having picked up awards at Galway, Newport Beach, Cork and Kerry, thus far.