Madeleine Gottlieb is an award-winning Australian director, screenwriter and producer whose work spans film and premium television, with premieres at SXSW, TIFF, Tribeca, Series Mania, MIFF and Sydney Film Festival. A recipient of both Australian Directors’ Guild and AACTA Awards, she is known for her distinctive cinematic sensibility and psychologically rich, character-driven storytelling.

 

Most recently, Madeleine 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 against the otherworldly landscape of Coober Pedy, the series premiered in July 2026 to widespread critical acclaim. The Guardian awarded it 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”.

 

Previously, Madeleine was the set-up director of The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer, directing six of the eight episodes of the acclaimed crime anthology for Warner Bros, Easy Tiger and Foxtel. Starring Sam Neill, the series received five AACTA Award nominations, including Best Drama Series and Best Direction, for which Madeleine was nominated.

 

She also set-up Erotic Stories, an anthology exploring lust, desire and intimacy for Lingo Pictures and SBS. The series premiered at SXSW Sydney and received five AACTA Award nominations, including Best Drama Series. Her SBS Digital Originals series Latecomers, a frank and irreverent exploration of sex and disability, screened in competition at Series Mania in Lille before winning both Australian Directors’ Guild and AACTA Awards.

 

Madeleine’s short film Snare premiered in competition at SXSW before screening at Tribeca, Palm Springs, Seattle, Sydney and Melbourne film festivals. It was subsequently acquired by Mailchimp as part of the launch of its curated 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 received nominations at both the AACTA and Australian Directors’ Guild Awards.

 

Madeleine is drawn to stories that expose the strangeness beneath ordinary life, combining psychological complexity, dark humour and an unsettling cinematic sensibility. Across genres, her work explores the contradictions of intimacy, identity and power, with a particular fascination for the ways people conceal themselves from one another.

 

She is currently developing a slate of original film and television projects.