Allison Otto
BiographyAllison Otto is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and visual journalist.
Her first feature documentary, The Thief Collector, premiered in the Documentary Feature competition at SXSW 2022 and had subsequent screenings at Hot Docs, SFFILM Festival, Cleveland International Film Festival, and the Palm Springs Film Festival. The film was released as an Amazon Original in the UK and was released on Amazon in the US on May 2023.
Allison's documentary short, The Love Bugs (2019), was awarded Best Short Documentary in the 42nd Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards after screening on POV Shorts Season 3 (2020). The film was also long listed for an Oscar in the Documentary Short category, shortlisted for a 2019 International Documentary Association Award, and toured globally with the American Film Showcase.
Allison is a 2019 recipient of the SFFILM Catapult Film Fellowship, a 2018 and 2011 Telluride Mountainfilm Commitment grant recipient, and a 2018 Roy W. Dean grant winner.
Her journalism clients have included National Geographic, BBC America, NBC, the Sierra Club, Travel Channel, Atlas Obscura, and Lonely Planet.
In the role of director
The Thief Collector – Hot Docs 2022 (12/05/2022)
The criminal exploits of a New England couple are revealed in The Thief Collector. In 2017, while claiming material for his antique store from the estate of Rita and Jerry Alter in Cliff, New Mexico, Dave Van Auker finds a painting behind their bedroom door, which turns out to be Willem de Kooning’s painting “Woman-Ochre,” […]