Aaron Watson

Aaron Watson's career path has been anything but dull. He's acted in children's television programmes (eg InFocus and Oi), performed at the 1996 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with his friend Duncan Sarkies, and spent 14 years as a tour guide in Russia and Central Europe. Dunedin-raised, Watson turned to producing in 2011, working with friend Jackie van Beek on short films In Safe Hands (a 2012 NZ Film Award winner) and Go the Dogs (2012 Berlin Film Festival). In 2017 the pair released their first feature film The Inland Road. Watson has gone on to produce feature comedy This Town, from Wellington filmmaker David White.

Jackie [van Beek] and I set out an ambitious plan and five year timeline to go from short films to a feature, and it wasn’t always easy but we supported each other and stuck to it. I’m very proud of the end result. Aaron Watson on his first feature film, The Inland Road