Jana McKinnon

Biography

Jana Naomi McKinnon was born in 1999 to an Austrian mother and Australian father in Korneuburg, Lower Austria, and grew up in Australia and Vienna. She made her acting debut in 2006 in the Austrian short film "Bleiben will ich wo ich nie gewesen bin". She had a (very) small role as a barbecue party guest in Götz Spielmann's "Revanche" (AT 2008). McKinnon played her first leading role in a feature film in Peter Brunner's "Mein blindes Herz" ("My Blind Heart", AT 2013), as a 13-year-old runaway who briefly gives support to a depressed man who is nearly blind.

For her leading role in the coming-of-age film "Beautiful Girl" (AT 2015), she received a nomination for the Austrian Film Award 'Romy' as Best Young Actress. At the Filmkunstfest Mecklenburg-Vorpommern she was awarded in the same category. She had other leading roles in Peter Brunner's award-winning film poem "Jeder der fällt hat Flügel" ("Those Who Fall Have Wings", AT 2015), about a teenager's relationship with her death-sensing grandmother, and in Sandra Wollner's mysterious, experimentally staged family story "Das unmögliche Bild" ("The Impossible Picture", DE/AT 2016).

In 2018, McKinnon was seen alongside Alli Neumann in Kim Frank's "Wach", about two friends who want to stay awake and wander through the city as long as possible without the aid of drugs. For her performance in this film, McKinnon was nominated for the 2019 Studio Hamburg Newcomer Award and won the 2020 New Faces Award for Best Newcomer Actress.

At the 2020 Berlinale, Sandra Wollner's existentialist-poetic science fiction film "The Trouble With Being Born" (AT/DE) premiered, and won the Special Jury Prize. McKinnon played one of the leading role in the film. In the Amazon series "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" ("We Children from Bahnhof Zoo", 2021), a loose new adaptation of the bestseller "Christiane F. - Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" ("Christiane F."), McKinnon played the lead role of Christiane, who slides ever deeper into drug addiction and prostitution.