Skip to main content
Sign in

AnnaCottrell

  • Director
  • Producer
Anna-Cottrell-Key-Profile.jpg

Christchurch-raised Anna Cottrell, ONZM, is a prolific documentary maker, with a keen interest in the stories that people tell. Her work ranges widely, from documentaries on immigrants (An Immigrant Nation) and family (Other People's Children), to five seasons of the bite-sized Great War Stories. Cottrell launched her company AC Productions in 2001.

Screenography

OHMS! Protest! A Celebration of Resistance
2023 Director, Producer Short film
The Kiwi, the Knight and the Qashqai
2018 Director, Producer, Camera Television
The Wahine 50 Years On - Survival Stories
2018 Director, Writer, Producer Television
Great War Stories 4 - Dr Jessie Scott
2017 Producer, Director, Writer Television
Great War Stories 4 - Thomas Blake
2017 Producer, Director, Writer Television

Biography

Anna Cottrell's work as a documentary maker and oral historian has taken her from New Zealand to Gallipoli, and many places between. A strong advocate for the importance of telling local stories, she has chronicled people's experiences of parenthood, immigration and war. Cottrell has a special interest in what motivates people.

Awards

2025 Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM)
For services to documentary filmmaking and migrant communities

2017 New Zealand Television Awards
Nominated for Best Factual Series: Great War Stories, series four

2007 DOCNZ Documentary Film Festival
Nominated for Best New Zealand Medium Documentary: An Abbreviated Life

“I’m passionate about New Zealand stories, whether it’s listening to them, reading them or telling them.”

— Anna Cottrell

Related images

An-Abbreviated-Life-gallery-1.jpg
A photo taken at the awards for the 2008 DOCNZ Documentary Film Festival, where An Abbreviated Life was a finalist: from left to right, co-director Jan Jeans, the film's subject Sarah Hitchings, Sarah's friend Natasha and co-director Anna Cottrell.
Kindly supplied by Anna Cottrell