Madeleine Gottlieb is an award-winning Australian director, producer and screenwriter whose work has screened at SXSW, TIFF, Tribeca, Palm Springs, SeriesMania, MIFF and Sydney Film Festival.

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A recipient of the 2023 Australian Directors' Guild Award and 2024 AACTA Award for Best Online Series, Madeleine has built a reputation for elevated, character-driven storytelling across premium television and film.

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Most recently, Madeleine set up, directed and executive produced all six episodes of Treasure & Dirt, a neo-noir mystery series produced by Easy Tiger for the ABC in association with the BBC. Starring Michael Dorman and Liv Hewson and filmed in Coober Pedy, the series premiered on ABC TV and ABC iview in July 2026 to widespread critical acclaim.

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The Guardian awarded the series five stars, describing it as “a gloriously strange detective mystery, unlike any you’ve seen before” and praising its “grand and surreal cinematic scope rarely seen in television crime dramas”. 

 

Prior to this, Madeleine set up The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer for Warner Bros, Easy Tiger and Foxtel and directed six of its eight episodes. Starring Sam Neill, the series received five AACTA Award nominations including Best Drama Series and Best Direction, for which Madeleine was personally nominated.

 

She also set up Erotic Stories, an anthology series of contemporary tales about lust, desire and longing for Lingo Pictures and SBS, which premiered at SXSW Sydney and received five 2024 AACTA Award nominations including Best Drama Series. Her SBS Digital Originals series Latecomers - about two strangers with cerebral palsy determined to explore their relationship with sex and each other - screened in competition at SeriesMania in Lille before winning both the ADG and AACTA awards.

 

In film, Madeleine’s short Snare had its world premiere in competition at SXSW before screening at Tribeca, Palm Springs, Seattle, Sydney and Melbourne. It was later acquired by Mailchimp to launch its boutique streaming platform, Mailchimp Presents. Her follow-up, You and Me, Before and After, starring Yael Stone and Emily Barclay, premiered at MIFF and TIFF and was nominated for AACTA and ADG Awards. 

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Madeleine is a genre-agnostic storyteller with a particular love of mystery, thriller and elevated genre work. She is drawn to stories about family and the intersections of Jewish culture, feminism, queerness and contemporary masculinity, and is passionate about the representation of diverse experiences onscreen. She has a wide development slate spanning television and film.