Travis Bain

Travis Bain is a filmmaker based in Cairns, Queensland. Travis fell in love with cinema at an early age, when he saw his first film, Star Wars, at age four. The VHS boom of the early ’80s fuelled his obsession with all types of cinema, ranging from Kubrick and Lean to exploitation schlock. In 1998 Travis studied film & television production in Brisbane, and won awards for his short films and TV commercials.

In 2002, inspired by Robert Rodriguez’s $7,000 breakthrough feature El Mariachi, Travis wrote, produced and directed his own self-funded debut feature, Scratched. Scratched screened in Brisbane in 2005 as one of the four finalists in the inaugural Australia/New Zealand digiSPAA Digital Feature Initiative, and also at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival.

Travis followed Scratched by writing, producing and directing his second feature Throwback, which was selected for a dozen international film festivals and won multiple awards. Throwback was released on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD worldwide in 2015, screened Australia-wide on the Seven Network, and marked Travis in the eyes of many reviewers as a filmmaker to watch.

In 2017 Travis’ third feature, the crime thriller Landfall, premiered on the film festival circuit to universally positive reviews, with screenings in Cairns, Melbourne and the Gold Coast, followed by screenings on the Seven Network across Australia and DVD and streaming platforms globally.

Travis won the Tony Bonner Award for Best Emerging New Talent at the 2017 Australian Screen Industry Network (ASIN) Awards, and in 2022 he won Best Director, also at the ASIN Awards, for his short film Starspawn: Overture.

In 2023 Travis returned from a pandemic-induced hiatus with his 13th short film Zombies V the Men's Shed, which won the Best Film and People's Choice awards at the 10th annual Understory FIlm Festival.