Dearbhla Walsh

Academy Member

Dearbhla Walsh is an award-winning Irish film and television director who has worked on drama series for several television channels in Ireland and the UK. Key credits include Fargo, Bad Sisters, The Big Bow Bow, Hide and Seek, Eastenders, Shameless, Funland, The Silence, and Penny Dreadful.

She won the 2009 Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special for Part I of the serial Little Dorrit. Dearbhla directed Roald Dahl's Esio Trol in 2014, starring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench, written by Richard Curstin and produced by Hilary Bevan Jones.

Dearbhla has been the subject of an IFTA 'In Conversation With ...', and has hosted IFTA's 'In Conversation with' Neil Jordan as part of the Irish Academy's 20th anniversary screening of 'The Crying Game'. In 2023 and 2025 Dearbhla recieved great success for her Apple TV series Bad Sisters, Dearbhla won the Best Director of a drama series in 2023 and 2025 along with the many other IFTA wins Bad sisters recieved across both years. Dearblha also accepted the BAFTA award for Best Drama Series in 2023.

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"This means so much – thank you to IFTA, to the Academy and to my peers. To be recognized by your own colleagues and people you respect having grown up in the industry I have to genuinely say means a huge amount so thank you very, very much."
Dearbhla Walsh
(on receiving her IFTA Win 2010)