Allison Otto is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and visual journalist. Her first feature documentary, The Thief Collector, premiered at SXSW 2022. Subsequent screenings included Hot Docs, the SFFILM festival, and Palm Springs International. Variety magazine hailed The Thief Collector as “a nimble and entertaining dissection of a crime” and a film “that builds to a supreme moment of ‘Oh. My. God.’” The Thief Collector is currently streaming as an Amazon Original in the UK and began streaming on Amazon and iTunes in the US in May 2023. The film ranked as one of the most popular documentaries on iTunes in its first weekend on the streaming platform.
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 shortlisted for a 2019 International Documentary Association Award and was long listed for an Oscar in the Documentary Short category. Allison is also 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 clients have included National Geographic, BBC America, NBC, Travel Channel, and Lonely Planet. Allison’s exclusive story of the discovery of a new invertebrate species was selected by National Geographic as one of their “Ten Best First-of-their-Kind” stories of 2016.
She is represented by William Morris Endeavor.