Tracy Mathewson

Dr Tracy Mathewson is a writer, director, script consultant and educator working across film, theatre and screenwriting. She lectures in Fiction Film Production at UCL, bringing professional filmmaking experience into her work with emerging writers and directors.

Her directing credits include the science-fiction short Appellation (2016), the transatlantic family drama California (2021) and the psychological dark comedy Ortolan (2023). For Ortolan, she collaborated with writer, actor and producer Kate Winter as director and script editor, exploring fractured family relationships, buried trauma and unreliable memory. Her films have screened internationally and received awards including Best Direction at Berlin Sci-Fi Film Fest for Appellation and directing awards at London Rocks and Show Low Film Festival for California.

Her theatre work includes the 2025 production of Lee Blessing’s Down the Road at Playhouse East for American Theater of London, examining the ethical tensions between true-crime storytelling, its subjects and its audiences. Her film-industry experience also includes assisting Chloé Zhao on Hamnet.

Mathewson holds a PhD in Film by Creative Practice from the University of York. Her feature screenplay Render, developed through her doctoral research, placed among the top 15 per cent of entries in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship competition. Her research explores conspiracy cinema and screenwriting as creative practice, with publications in Film International and the Journal of Screenwriting. Alongside her teaching and research, she is developing the feature films Ortolan and Clutch.