Sally Aitken

Sally Aitken is an Emmy®-nominated director, writer and showrunner of multiple international series. She is known for adventurous collaborations characterized by compassion, humor and fierce intelligence. Her formidable directing slate includes some of the most talked-about and highest-rated screen content for broadcasters around the globe, delivering hours of original programming to BBC, ABC, SBS, C4, Channel7, CBC, PBS, National Geographic, Foxtel, Discovery, the History Channel, ZDF, Arte and TVNZ. Aitken’s award-winning work includes the Camera d’Or-nominated feature documentary “A Cinematic Life,” selected for the Cannes Film Festival, and three episodes of “David Stratton’s Stories of Australian Cinema” (ABC), which she wrote and directed, scoring 1.1m viewers per episode and nominated for an International Emmy.

Most recently, Aitken has finished series producing, directing and co-writing “The Pacific: In the Wake of Captain Cook with Sam Neill” (Foxtel/Prime/Sky). A six-episode, 60-minute epic with the actor traveling the largest ocean in the world to discover the indigenous perspective on Captain Cook’s voyages. The much-lauded series has quickly become the highest-rated series on Foxtel’s History Channel since 2013. Other major work includes helming the eight-part ambitious social experiment “The Week The Women Went” (CBC), wrangling the iconoclast “starchitect” in “Getting Frank Gehry” (2015, BBC/ABC), conceiving “Air Rescue” (5th season, Channel7)—the first fully brand funded success series in Australia—and writing and directing “Streets of Your Town” (2016, ABC), a two-episode, 60minute romp with comedian Tim Ross, for which Aitken collected both the Australian Director’s Guild Award as well as the Australian Writer’s Award for Best Documentary series.