KELLY KRAUSE is a genre filmmaker who still loves playing dress-up and staying up way past her bedtime. She fenced sabre for Boston University and was previously scouted for the Egyptian National Boxing Team, but don't worry, she prefers to kill you with kindness rather than her hands (or sword!). She is also a witch with a practice grounded in Irish and English folk traditions and is not afraid to use her powers for good.

A recovering archaeologist and academic, Kelly made her way into filmmaking via San Francisco’s delightfully-weird burlesque scene when she debuted her homage to Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, Paris’s historic naturalistic horror theater. During her time as an archaeologist and cultural heritage manager, she worked with projects and institutions that include the Egyptian Ministry of State of Antiquities, UNESCO, History Channel and Discovery Channel. Her collaborations often focused on storytelling, sustainable development and community engagement.

As a filmmaker, Kelly's focus is on centering marginalized experiences to drive equity, empathy, visibility, inclusion and social justice. She loves throwing ordinary people into extraordinary, often supernatural situations, and frequently explores family dynamics, whether that family be blood, found or chosen. She prides herself on her empathy, sense of justice and out-of-the-box problem-solving, not just in her storytelling but in her collaboration approach.

Developing her short film Storage (2023) around the resources available to her—including a husband willing to be on camera in exchange for a good bottle of whiskey—meant that she could put her budget toward an all-women crew and pay them the rates that they asked for. Backed by Couper Samuelson, President of Feature Films at Blumhouse (Get Out, Whiplash, M3GAN), Storage won “Best Dark Drama” at Oregon Screams Horror Film Festival and placed as a finalist at several other festivals around the world.