DashaCowley

I’m a London-based writer-director and photographer working across fiction, documentary, and commercial film. I graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Chinese and History. My first role in the industry was as a development assistant on Gerald Fox's BFI feature documentary Kinaesthesia, on which I later became producer and editor. The film premiered at BFI Southbank NFT1 in April 2026, and was praised by The Guardian for its "expert edit" of early cinema clips. Simultaneously, I've worked as assistant to the director, 1st Assistant Director, and stills photographer across fiction, documentary, and commercial productions.

My work on Kinaesthesia, a study of early, pre-verbal cinema technique, sits alongside a long-running darkroom photography practice, and the two have come to inform each other directly. Both are concerned with meaning made without words: the grammar of gesture and expression, composition and camera movement that silent film and photography rely on instead of words. I'm drawn to what can be read in silence and, on a more personal register, to what people don't say to each other.

Since September 2024, I've worked as assistant to writer-director Dorothea Sing Zhang, supporting development on high-level commercial projects in China and London, including campaigns for Nothing, Hermès, Bottega Veneta, Prada, and RIMOWA, alongside Sing Zhang's acclaimed narrative shorts, selected at Toronto Film Festival, Indie Lisboa, and Palm Springs Film Fest. I travelled to the Gobi Desert as stills photographer and BTS videographer on Sing Zhang's short film As A Cure, which premiered at Locarno Film Festival and San Sebastián Film Festival this summer.

I'm currently in development on my directorial debut, the fiction short If Walls Could Talk.