Taru Mäkelä (born 1 April 1959) is a Finnish film director and screenwriter.

[3] Mäkelä began her career as a director in the 1980s at YLE, where she wrote and directed the Smiley Lips entertainment series.

[4] She has directed three feature films: Little Sister (1999), The Storage (2011) and August Fools (2013).

In December 2014, Mäkelä's comedy Eila, Rampe and Likka, based on the characters in Sinikka Nopola's books, premiered.

The documentary Saalis (2007), directed and written by Taru Mäkelä, tells the story of her family.