---
name: "Kate Dennis"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/kate-dennis"
fi1m_id: "kate-dennis"
imdb_id: "nm0219491"
tmdb_id: 213229
wikidata_id: "Q121270998"
roles: ["Director"]
reviewed_on_fi1m: 7
average_fi1m_score: 73
average_as: "director"
average_over: 4
updated: "2026-09-30T20:33:53.559709+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Kate Dennis

## Identity

Kate Dennis

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/kate-dennis
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** kate-dennis
- **IMDb ID:** nm0219491
- **TMDB ID:** 213229
- **Wikidata ID:** Q121270998
- **Same entity:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q121270998, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0219491/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/213229

Director. Born in Sydney, Australia.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Active:** 1993–present
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 7: 4 directing, 3 crew
- **Frequently works with:** [Claire Scanlon](https://film.one/person/claire-scanlon.md), [Jesse Peretz](https://film.one/person/jesse-peretz.md), [Lynn Shelton](https://film.one/person/lynn-shelton.md), [Rachel Shukert](https://film.one/person/rachel-shukert.md), [Roger Kumble](https://film.one/person/roger-kumble.md), [Wendey Stanzler](https://film.one/person/wendey-stanzler.md)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 73, as director, over 4 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 1990s 81 (3), 2010s 75 (3), 2020s 68 (1)
- **Fi1m against the critics:** 73 to 78 across 4 titles
- **Score spread:** 0 at 80+, 4 at 60–79, 0 under 60
- **Genres:** Comedy 2, Drama 2, Action & Adventure 1, Crime 1, Mystery 1, Sci-Fi & Fantasy 1
- **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q121270998, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0219491/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/213229

## Streaming the US now

- **Disney+:** [*The Handmaid's Tale*](https://film.one/tv/the-handmaids-tale.md) (75), [*The Mindy Project*](https://film.one/tv/the-mindy-project.md) (72)
- **Netflix:** [*GLOW*](https://film.one/tv/glow.md) (78)
- **Peacock:** [*All Her Fault*](https://film.one/tv/all-her-fault.md) (68)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Kate Dennis

> Kate Dennis directs television the unglamorous way: she arrives on someone else's series, serves it and leaves it looking as it did. On *The Handmaid's Tale* and *All Her Fault* that is a real craft, and it makes her hard to see.

The Irvines' house in *All Her Fault* (2025) is mostly glass. Dennis and her co-director Minkie Spiro shoot it so that Sarah Snook's Marissa is forever visible to the people she cannot reach, framed through a partition or a window at exactly the moment a scene needs two people in the same room. It is a small decision and it does the work of a page of dialogue. It is also about as much of Dennis as anyone can point to on screen, and that is the difficulty with writing about her.

She crewed first. Through the 1990s she was a camera assistant and script supervisor on *Cliffhanger* (1993), *The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert* (1994) and *Babe* (1995), which is an education in how a set runs that most directors never get. "I crewed for ten years because I wanted to understand the whole process before jumping in and calling myself a director," she said in 2017, and the work since bears it out. Twenty episodes of *Offspring* (2010) and runs on *Love My Way*, *Rake* and *Secrets & Lies* were Australian series that moved between comedy and drama, sometimes within the same hour, and when she moved to American television in the middle of the last decade that was what she was hired to do: two episodes of *The Handmaid's Tale* (2017), *GLOW* (2017), and the first four episodes of *Run* (2020), which she also produced.

Our own reviews show the problem with judging her. The first ten episodes of *The Handmaid's Tale* frightened us more than anything television had done with tyranny, and we said so; but the fear belonged to Elisabeth Moss's face and Ane Crabtree's red cloaks, both fixed before Dennis walked on set for her two hours, one of them "The Bridge". On *All Her Fault* we were held for four episodes and then sat through two more while the series explained its coincidences to us, and we cannot tell you which of the eight are hers. Four are. Nothing in the direction announces where one director stops and the other starts, and Gypsy Taylor's pale, expensive wardrobe for Marissa and Jeff Beal's score, best when it goes quiet, are doing the visible work. A director who has spent ten years in continuity knows that matching the show is the job. It is a virtue that leaves no fingerprints.

In 2023 she said, "That's it, I'm not doing a show where an actor holds a gun." A kidnap mystery two years later is a curious place to keep such a vow, though nobody said the resolution had to be gentle. What we would like to see is the thing she has not yet had: a series that is hers from the first frame, so that for once we could say which of the good decisions were Dennis's.

## Biography

Kate Dennis is an Australian television director. She began her career in the camera and script supervision departments on Australian and international films including *The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert* (1994), *Babe* (1995) and *Cliffhanger* (1993).

Dennis has directed episodes of numerous series, among them *Offspring* (2010–2014), *The Handmaid's Tale* (2017), for which she received a Primetime Emmy nomination, *Suits*, *Fear the Walking Dead*, *Preacher*, *Sleepy Hollow*, *New Amsterdam*, *Run* (2020) and *The Serpent Queen* (2024). She directed four episodes of the 2025 series *All Her Fault* and has also worked as an executive producer on several projects.

*Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, smh.com.au, vogue.com.au.*

## On Fi1m (7)

### Directed (4) — the average rests on these

- *All Her Fault* (2025), Fi1m 68, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/all-her-fault.md)
- *GLOW* (2017), Fi1m 78, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/glow.md)
- *The Handmaid's Tale* (2017), Fi1m 75, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-handmaids-tale.md)
- *The Mindy Project* (2012), Fi1m 72, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-mindy-project.md)

### Crew (3)

- *Babe* (1995), Fi1m 88, Script Supervisor — [page](https://film.one/film/babe.md)
- *The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert* (1994), Fi1m 81, Continuity — [page](https://film.one/film/the-adventures-of-priscilla-queen-of-the-desert.md)
- *Cliffhanger* (1993), Fi1m 74, Script Supervisor — [page](https://film.one/film/cliffhanger.md)

## Complete filmography (35)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *All Her Fault* (2025), series, Director — Fi1m 68, [page](https://film.one/tv/all-her-fault.md)
- *PULSE* (2025), series, Director, Executive Producer
- *RUN* (2020), series, Executive Producer, Director
- *Tommy* (2020), series, Director, Executive Producer
- *New Amsterdam* (2018), series, Director
- *Krypton* (2018), series, Director
- *Harrow* (2018), series, Director
- *GLOW* (2017), series, Director — Fi1m 78, [page](https://film.one/tv/glow.md)
- *The Handmaid's Tale* (2017), series, Director — Fi1m 75, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-handmaids-tale.md)
- *Preacher* (2016), series, Director
- *Second Chance* (2016), series, Director
- *Fear the Walking Dead* (2015), series, Director
- *CSI: Cyber* (2015), series, Director
- *Secrets and Lies* (2015), series, Director
- *Party Tricks* (2014), series, Director
- *TURN: Washington's Spies* (2014), series, Director
- *Sleepy Hollow* (2013), series, Director
- *The Mindy Project* (2012), series, Director — Fi1m 72, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-mindy-project.md)
- *Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries* (2012), series, Director
- *Suits* (2011), series, Director
- *The Alice* (2004), Director
- *Buffalo Soldiers* (2002), Second Unit Director
- *Rescue Me* (2002), series, Director
- *Superstition* (2001), Screenplay
- *The Secret Life of Us* (2001), series, Director
- *Big Sky* (1997), series, Director
- *Still Twisted* (1997), Director
- *Children of the Revolution* (1996), as Continuity
- *Twisted Tales* (1996), series, Director
- *Babe* (1995), Script Supervisor — Fi1m 88, [page](https://film.one/film/babe.md)
- *Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie* (1995), Script Supervisor
- *The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert* (1994), as Continuity — Fi1m 81, [page](https://film.one/film/the-adventures-of-priscilla-queen-of-the-desert.md)
- *Shotgun Wedding* (1994), as Clapper Loader
- *Cliffhanger* (1993), Script Supervisor — Fi1m 74, [page](https://film.one/film/cliffhanger.md)
- *All That I Am*, Director

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/kate-dennis