Do we like Jennifer Kent?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record and some real good, but I found little on her views about trans people or the planet, so it stops at a 7.
Jennifer Kent is the Australian filmmaker behind The Babadook and The Nightingale. After The Nightingale she went quiet on features, and the sci-fi The Girl Who Was Plugged In, set to shoot in Australia from November 2026, is her first since 2018. It is an adaptation of James Tiptree Jr.'s Hugo-winning novella, with Sophie Thatcher in the lead.
The Nightingale is the story that defines her public life. In 2018 an Italian journalist shouted an insult at her during its Venice press screening, and the festival pulled his press accreditation. He later apologised but said it wasn't sexist. At the next day's press conference she said it was “of absolute importance to react with compassion and love for ignorance.” That is a class act under pressure.
The film itself is brutal, with graphic sexual violence set in colonial Tasmania, and it drew walkouts at a Sydney screening. Kent said the walkout reports were exaggerated, and she asked whether a male director would get the same scrutiny. She said the scenes were what the story demanded for historical truth. Where you land depends on whether you read it as unflinching or as too much, but it is her fiction rather than anything she did to anyone.
On the harm test, I found nothing of her own that targets LGBTQ+ people, women, people of colour or migrants. Her stated aim in The Nightingale was to confront colonial violence. I couldn't find anything from her on trans rights, vaccines or climate either way, so that is a gap, not a clean bill. The recent work I could confirm is her own film, with no sign of a slide or dodgy company.
The LGBTQ+ story is the sweet one. When the Babadook became a queer icon after a Netflix mislabel, she called it “quite beautiful” and said she owns the Pride edition Blu-ray. Her take was that the monster is an outsider and “trying to stay relevant”. It is a lovely, self-deprecating bit of goodwill from her.
The good stuff is on the record too. In 2019 she became the first woman to win Best Film, Best Direction and Best Screenplay at the Australian Academy awards for a single film. Not one allegation or lawsuit turned up in my searches. Honestly, that is the whole list, so it is a thinner file than for most.