Irish Filmmaker Myrid Carten Named to BAFTA Breakthrough 2026
Irish filmmaker Myrid Carten has been named to the 2026 U.K. cohort of BAFTA Breakthrough, a talent programme supported by Netflix. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) announced the cohort on 4 November 2026.
Carten's debut feature is A Want in Her, a documentary she wrote and directed. She also appears in the film and handled the cinematography, the work of deciding how every shot looks.
The film follows Carten and her mother, Nuala, who goes missing in Ireland. It explores intergenerational trauma, mental health and addiction, the way hard experiences can pass from one generation of a family to the next. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Carten made the film after studying fine art, and she has said she always wanted to make fiction too.
The structure leans on personal material. According to Filmmaker Magazine, the film mixes home movies, intimate phone calls and earlier art school projects into one story.
The documentary had its world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2024. Festivals like IDFA are where sales agents and buyers first see a film, and where many documentaries find their distributors. Deadline published the first trailer ahead of that premiere.
The Hollywood Reporter also reports that the film won three British Independent Film Awards: best feature documentary, best debut director for a feature documentary, and the Raindance Maverick Award. The British Independent Film Awards, known as BIFA, had earlier longlisted Carten for the debut director prize in 2025.
BAFTA calls its Breakthrough programme its flagship scheme for the next generation of talent. Its aim is to showcase emerging people in film and television and to help speed up their careers. Carten is now one of the names in that group.
For a first feature made from family footage, the route from festival premiere to awards season has been a steady one. Carten has said that fiction is the next step she wants to take. Her next project has not been announced.
