Mary McGuckian is an Irish film director, screenwriter, producer and previously actress.

She grew up in Co Antrim, studied engineering at Trinity College Dublin, and drama at the Drama Studio in London, where she wrote and directed several acclaimed plays — including a long-running adaptation of The Midnight Court.

She launched her film career in the early 1990s in Ireland with Words Upon the Window Pane (1994), an adaptation filmed from W.B. Yeats’ play that screened at the Venice and Sundance Film Festivals. She followed this with This Is the Sea (1996/97), adapted from her own play.

In 2001 she founded Pembridge Pictures in the UK to develop and finance the film Best and adaptations of literary works, most notably The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2004), featuring an ensemble cast including Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Kathy Bates and Gabriel Byrne.

Over three decades McGuckian has written and directed over a dozen independent feature films with a collaborative actor-led approach — from the international ensemble in The Amorality Trilogy Plus One (2006–10), to Man on the Train (2011) – Donald Sutherland and Larry Mullen Jr., and The Price of Desire (2015) – Orla Brady, Alanis Morissette and Vincent Pérez.

Her 2019 film A Girl from Mogadishu — based on the story of activist Ifrah Ahmed and starring Aja Naomi King and Barkhad Abdi — won audience and jury awards at Dinard and received the Cinema for Peace Women’s Empowerment Award at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival.

McGuckian’s work has premiered at major festivals worldwide, including Sundance, Tribeca, Venice, Locarno, Edinburgh, London and Galway. She has received many industry honours such as the WIFTS (Women in Film & Television International) Career Achievement Award .

More recently, she completed work on The Bridge of San Luis Rey Remastered (2022) and is focusing on episodic scripted drama development. Her slate includes the recurring series, Anonymous Encounters set in Los Angeles, #IBelieveHer, an Irish-Canadian-Luxembourg co-production as well as a feature film collaboration with Samantha Morton, Can I Call You Back?