Kate Barker-Froyland is a writer and director whose films have played at numerous film festivals. Her first feature film, SONG ONE, (starring Anne Hathaway, Johnny Flynn, and Mary Steenburgen and produced by Marc Platt and Jonathan Demme) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival before being released domestically and internationally.
Her short documentary, INDUSTRIOUS, which explores internationally acclaimed portrait photographer Marco Grob's creative process, screened at the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland and EVERY DAY, a fashion video she directed for LA-based designer Jesse Kamm, was featured in The New York Times' T Magazine. Her short film MATCH screened at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of their joint New Directors/New Films series and was a semi-finalist for the Student Academy Awards. Kate was selected for the IFP/Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Emerging Visions program and she has also directed videos for musical and dance artists including the Vanessa Long Dance Company. Her short film SNAPSHOTS was acquired by London-based distributor Future Shorts after premiering at South by Southwest Film Festival.
In addition to having extensive on-set experience as a crew member on a variety of feature film productions as well as shadowing directors on television shows, Kate was selected for Sony Television's Diverse Directors Program. She has served as a creative consultant for director Jonathan Demme and has taught screenwriting courses at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Chapman University in California. In 2021, she directed Chekhov’s Dreamers for Copenhagen Theater Circle, based on a series of Anton Chekhov’s short stories she adapted for the stage.
After directing the ‘making-of’ Merchant-Ivory’s THE WHITE COUNTESS in Shanghai, Kate was the assistant to director David Frankel on THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Kate spent several years studying and living in Paris. She earned her MFA degree in directing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where she was awarded the James Bridges Development Award for excellence in working with actors.