Sean McAllister

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. Since then he has made films for both the BBC and Channel 4; working in the UK and internationally. His candid, frank films 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.

In 2005 his remarkable film The Liberace Of Baghdad about Iraqi pianist Samir Peter won the Special Jury Prize (World Documentary) at the Sundance Film Festival.

Sean is much more than a dispassionate fly-on-the-wall observer of other peoples lives, there is a fly-in-the-soup approach to his film-making, he becomes involved, he intervenes, he asks the questions which often provoke his subjects.