Sarah Watt

Sarah Ann Watt (30 August 1958 – 4 November 2011) was an Australian film director, writer and animator.

Born in Sydney,[1] Watt completed a Graduate Diploma of Film and Television (Animation) at the Swinburne Film and Television School (now Victorian College of the Arts), Melbourne in 1990. Her student film "Catch of the Day" was to reflect the style of future work. In 1995, she directed a short film, Small Treasures, which won Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival. In 2000, she made a program for the SBS series Swim Between the Flags called "Local Dive". It was made concurrently with another project that she was directing called "The Way of the Birds" based on the 1996 book of the same name by author Meme McDonald. She received the Australian Film Institute's award for Best Director for her 2005 film Look Both Ways.[2]

Watt returned to the Victorian College of the Arts School of Film and Television to teach animation and was to assist in the development of many animators including Academy Award winner Adam Eliot in 1996. Watt was instrumental in the development of scripts for all of her students, but left the School to further develop her own projects, returning on occasion as a script and final production assessor.

Watt was also a published author, she wrote and illustrated the picture book Clem Always Could and co-authored Worse Things Happen at Sea with William McInnes.[3][4]

During the post-production of Look Both Ways, Watt was diagnosed with cancer. Her second film My Year Without Sex was released in 2009.

She died on 4 November 2011 after suffering for six years from breast and bone cancer, aged 53.[2][5]

Sarah Watt was married to actor William McInnes.[2] They have two children, Clem (b. 1993) and Stella (b. 1998).[2]