Sally Aitken
Quick Facts
Biography
Sally Aitken is an Australian documentary film and television director, writer, and producer. She is known for Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story;David Stratton: A Cinematic Life; and Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles. She is co-founder, co-principal (with Aline Jacques), and director of the all-female film production company SAM Content.
Career
Sally Aitken has produced, written, and directed several documentary films.
She is known for her work on the documentaries Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story, David Stratton: A Cinematic Life (about film critic David Stratton), Streets of Your Town, and The Week the Women Went.
In 2022, she co-founded the production company Sam Content, with Aline Jacques.
She co-wrote, directed and produced the documentary feature, Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles, for Amazon Prime Video, released in 2023. Co-writer and -director was Fraser Grut, andAline Jacques, Cass Avery, Daniel Story, and Fraser Grut were co-producers on the film.
She wrote and directed the feature-length documentary, Every Little Thing, which was selected for screening in the documentary competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The film was produced by Bettina Dalton, who also produced Playing with Sharks, which was also screened at Sundance, and edited by Tania Nehme.
Accolades
Aitken was nominated for Emmy Awards in 2018 at the International Emmy Award for Best Arts Programming for the documentary film David Stratton: A Cinematic Life, and at the 43rd News and Documentary Emmy Awards for the documentary Playing With Sharks in 2022.
List of awards and nominations
| Year | Result | Award | Category | Work | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Nominated | AACTA Awards | Best Direction in Nonfiction Television | Books That Made Us | |
| 2021 | Nominated | Best Documentary | Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story | ||
| Nominated | Australian Writers' Guild | Documentary – Public Broadcast | |||
| Won | Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival | World Cinema – Documentary | |||
| Won | Provincetown International Film Festival | Best Documentary | |||
| Nominated | Sundance Film Festival | World Cinema – Documentary | |||
| 2017 | Nominated | Cannes Film Festival | Golden Eye | David Stratton: A Cinematic Life | |
| Nominated | AWGIE Awards | Best Documentary | Streets of Your Town | ||
| 2009 | Nominated | Leo Awards | Best Documentary Program or Series | The Week the Women Went | |
| 2008 | Nominated | Gemini Awards | Best Reality Program or Series |
Filmography
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Every Little Thing |  Y | Y | Documentary | |
| 2023 | Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles | Y | Y | Y | Documentary |
| 2021 | Books That Made Us | Y | TV series | ||
| 2021 | Shark Beach with Chris Hemsworth | Y | Documentary | ||
| 2021 | Playing with Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story | Y | Y | Documentary | |
| 2019 | The Pool | Y | Y | 2 episodes | |
| 2018 | Nolan – The Man and the Myth | Y | Y | Documentary | |
| 2018 | The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook with Sam Neill | Y | Y | Y | 6 episodes |
| 2017 | David Stratton: A Cinematic Life | Y | 3 episodes | ||
| 2016 | Streets of Your Town | Y | Y | Documentary | |
| 2015 | Getting Frank Gehry | Y | Y | Y | Documentary |
| 2015 | Imagine | Y | Y | Y | TV series |
| 2015 | The Great Australian Race Riot | Y | Y | Y | Documentary |
| 2013 | Air Rescue | Y | 6 episodes | ||
| 2012 | Family Confidential | Y | Y | 1 episode | |
| 2011 | Seduction in the City | Y | Y | Documentary | |
| 2009 | Ultimate Engineering | Y | Y | 1 episode | |
| 2008 | The Week the Women Went | Y | Y | 8 episodes | |
| 2007 | National Geographic: Engineering the Impossible | Y | Y | Y | 1 episode |
| 2006 | The Blonde Mystique | Y | Y | Documentary | |
| 2006 | Warrior Empire: The Mughals of India | Y | Y | Documentary | |
| 2004 | Colonial House | Y | Y | Y | 2 episodes |
