About

Kathleen Harris is a documentary filmmaker based in Dublin. Her most recent film, environmental documentary BIRDSONG (2024) about Irish ornithologist Seán Ronayne, premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival. She was one of the festival’s Discovery Award nominees for emerging talent. 

From 2014 to 2022, Kathleen was a video journalist for The Irish Times, directing, shooting, and editing hundreds of videos for online. She has covered a wide range of subjects, including Ireland’s abortion and gay marriage referendums, sexual assault on college campuses, national elections, and grassroots environmental activism. She has worked abroad, covering stories about migration in Bangladesh, Greece, and France. In 2021, she was named Video Journalist of the Year by the NewsBrands Journalism Awards for Third Wave, a short documentary about healthcare workers battling a surge of Covid-19 cases in a Dublin hospital. In 2020, she won the Justice Media Award for TV/Video for The Push, a short about the fight for same-sex marriage and reproductive rights in Northern Ireland.

Kathleen’s hour-long documentary Growing Up at the End of the World aired on RTÉ, Ireland’s national service broadcaster, in 2020. The film follows three teen climate activists for 18 months as they strike from school, lead protest marches in Ireland, and work alongside Greta Thunberg to create a vision for the youth climate justice movement.

In 2019, Kathleen directed, produced, shot, and edited the short documentary Postcard from a Crisis about four Irish clowns who visit Greece to perform for children living in refugee camps. Commissioned by Clowns Without Borders, the film screened at festivals in Ireland and the UK, including the Galway Film Fleadh, Cork Film Festival, and Respect Belfast Human Rights Film Festival.

Born and raised in the United States, Kathleen has lived in Ireland since 2006.