Sean McAllister | Filmmaker | UK

After leaving school at 16, Sean McAllister worked in a series of low-paid, low-skilled factory jobs in his hometown of Hull before finding a camera and filming his way into the National Film and Television School (NFTS), graduating in 1996.

He is known for his candid, frank films that depict with extraordinary intimacy the lives of ordinary people who are struggling to survive but who are survivors; intelligent and resourceful people caught up in a world of political turmoil and personal conflict.

Sean is much more than a dispassionate fly-on-the-wall observer of other people's lives, there is a fly-in-the-soup (Vérité) approach to his film-making, he becomes involved, he intervenes, he asks the questions which often provoke his subjects (and himself) into insights, thoughts, and realisations which they never knew they had.

From his early films Working for the Enemy (1997) and The Minders (1998), Sundance Jury Prize-winning The Liberace of Baghdad (2005) to Japan: A Story of Love and Hate (2009) The Reluctant Revolutionary (2011) the BAFTA nominated A Syrian Love Story (2015) and A Northern Soul (2018), Sean’s work continues to inspire, to surprise and to fascinate audiences.

In 2017, Sean was the Creative Director for the opening ceremony when Hull was the UK City of Culture, bringing record audiences to the streets.