Rita Osei
Born in North London England to Ghanaian parents, Rita’s creative journey began in East London, after an early experience on set at her Montessori-style state school sparked a commitment to storytelling. She attended Camberwell College of Arts, graduating with a Joint Honours BA inVisual Arts, where she developed her first films and an instinct for emotionally charged, visual storytelling.
Her debut feature film, Bliss! an entertaining rites-of-passage adventure, premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The score was recorded on the Newman Scoring Stage, Los Angeles.
She directed 2nd Unit on the final two episodes of SISTER, HBO and Sky’s Comedy Horror The Baby, while continuing to develop a slate of ambitious long form film and television projects.
Rita founded 225 Film Club, a dynamic and high quality short film festival created to champion female excellence in direction and to amplify underrepresented cinematic voices. The platform has become a vital space for bold filmmaking talent and creative community building.
Her short film Aurora, now streaming internationally on SVOD platforms, follows “A perimenopausal vampire on a quest to kill a habit that won’t die!” The film won Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Actress in a Drama, and Best Supporting Actress in a Drama at Haunted House FearFest in New York, alongside nominations for Best Director and Best Actress at the Unrestricted View Horror Film Festival in London.
The score for Aurora was composed by Oleta Haffner through the inaugural Jonas Gwangwa Music Composition Initiative, a landmark collaboration between Mercury Studios, Globe, Decca Records, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
A full voting member of BAFTA, Rita is also a member of Directors UK, WGGB, Cinesisters, and Film Fatales. She has served as Jury Chair for BAFTA’s 75th, 76th, and 77th British Short Film Awards, juror for BAFTA’s 2024 TV Drama: Writer award, assessor for The Uncertain Kingdom short film fund, juror for the inaugural Chopard x Breaking Through The Lens Action Grant, and jury member for the 34th Raindance Film Festival.
Before moving fully into directing, Rita produced Threesome, a Telluride premiering short film starring Lesley Vickerage, Stuart Laing, and Hugh Quarshie. The film screened internationally at the British Pavilion in Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Newport Rhode Island, Raindance and numerous festivals worldwide before securing TV distribution through Sky Movies and Canal+.
Her multidisciplinary career also includes directing theatre and producing award-winning animation for Turner brands Cartoon Network and Boomerang across Europe. Earlier, she worked alongside prolific producer Nick de Grunwald developing feature films and documentaries, including the iconic BBC series Classic Albums.
A committed advocate for equity and access in the creative industries, Rita was a founding member of Turner Europe’s Diversity Council, where she spearheaded initiatives including deaf awareness training after hiring the first animator within the company’s European division who was deaf.
Rita’s work is driven by a creative vision to craft emotionally resonant and cinematically bolds tories that challenge convention and expand representation.
