Samuel Van Grinsven

Samuel Van Grinsven is a New Zealand-born Australian film director and screenwriter,^[1] whose debut feature film Sequin in a Blue Room was released in 2019.^[2]

A graduate of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, Van Grinsven made Sequin in a Blue Room as his graduation project. Centred on the coming-of-age of a gay teenager, the film was based on Van Grinsven's own experiences growing up queer in a conservative part of Australia.^[2] The film premiered in June 2019 at the 66th Sydney Film Festival, where it was the winner of the Audience Award for best Australian narrative feature.^[3] It was an AACTA Award nominee for Best Indie Film at the 9th AACTA Awards,^[4] and received commercial distribution in Australia in 2020 before going into wider international distribution in 2021.^[5]

His second feature film, Went Up the Hill, premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.^[1]