Working actors in the room.
A working director on the day.
The people teaching are not drama teachers who once acted. They are screen and stage performers with credits you can look up. The production days are run by someone who directs and produces for a living, which is a different job.
Who teaches, and who directs
Lee-Challe Kriel
Lead educator · working screen actor
South African and Australian. She started training at eight and has not stopped: Method and Morris, dramatic realism, classical and contemporary, Shakespeare, and musical theatre, across two countries. She wrote most of the FilmLab curriculum.
She is working now, not formerly. She plays Hope, the Australian lead, in the international feature Love Once More, and the lead in the short film What You Deserve, selected for the 2026 Gold Coast Film Festival. Before those, the lead in the Brave Minds series, and commercials for Leverlink and PLab.
And she has sat the exams she prepares students for. Trinity College London Grades 4 through 8, then the ATCL Diploma in Speech and Drama. That is the same qualification path this site tells you counts toward a Queensland Certificate of Education.
Award at the Australian Festival of Performance Arts. Finalist, World Monologue Games. General American and South African accents alongside her Australian. Bilingual in English and Afrikaans.
Tianna
Educator
A character actor who names Depp, Brando and D'Onofrio as her influences, and who directs for both stage and screen.
Advanced Diploma in Screen and Media, New York Film Academy, Gold Coast and Los Angeles. Screen credits include Ticket to Paradise and The Last Video Store, and Dora and the Lost City of Gold as a location assistant.
Peter Koevari
Director · producer · adult class teacher
Teaches the Monday adult class at New Farm. He also runs the production days, directs the short films, and takes the private direction sessions.
He writes and directs films for a living. Genre work mostly: science fiction, horror and crime, built on strong premises and made to travel. He also works in romantic comedy and drama, directs music videos, and is festival director of AFIN International.
And the films win. Diana won Best Australian Web Series at the Gold Coast Film Festival and Best Series at the Malta Film Festival. Quantum Ride won Best Sci-Fi Short at the Five Continents International Film Festival and at Calgary Horror Con. 30 took the Jury Prize for Best SciFi at Mindfield Los Angeles, and Broken won Best Short and Best Writing at the Top Indie Film Awards.
Directs, writes and produces through Koevari Pictures (formerly GP2 Entertainment). 8 of his own productions between 2017 and 2025, 4 of them directed, listed further down this page.
The director's films
Five posters, and what each film won
Wired and Diana were cast from students in these classes. The other three are his own Koevari Pictures films. Every award named here is on his IMDb page.
The reel
The director's own work
The production days are run by someone who does this for a living. Here is the reel rather than the claim.
His own productions, as Koevari Pictures
The 4 he directed play here, on this page. Nothing is fetched from YouTube until you press one.
Rest In Peace. Official music video for the cyberpunk short Quantum Ride, 2025. Directed.
30. Dystopian sci-fi short, teaser, 2024. Directed, wrote and produced.
3. Sci-fi thriller short, 2021. Directed, wrote, produced and cast.
Lessons. Short film, trailer, 2020. Directed and co-wrote.
- 2025
- Rest In Peace. Official music video for the cyberpunk short Quantum Ride. Directed.
- 2024
- 30. Dystopian sci-fi short, teaser. Directed, wrote and produced.
- 2021
- 3. Sci-fi thriller short. Directed, wrote, produced and cast.
- 2020
- Lessons. Short film, trailer. Directed and co-wrote.
- 2019
- Blood Bond. Teaser. Wrote and produced. Directed by another filmmaker.
- 2018
- Ring around a Rosie. Horror short, teaser. Wrote and produced. Directed by another filmmaker.
- 2018
- Mother's Day. Drama short, teaser. Wrote. Directed by another filmmaker.
- 2017
- Legends of Marithia. Fantasy pitch episodes, adapted from his own novels. Wrote. Directed by another filmmaker.
Koevari Pictures work, not FilmLab work: none of it is cast from this school's room, and none of it is counted among the finished pieces this site shows. Where somebody else directed, they are named.