Sally Potter

Directing

Sally Potter

Born 1949-09-19 · London

Charlotte Sally Potter OBE (born 19 September 1949) is an English film director and screenwriter. She is known for directing Orlando (1992), which won the audience prize for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. She also directed The Tango Lesson (1997), The Man Who Cried (2000), Yes (2004), Rage (2009), Ginger & Rosa (2012), The Party (2017) and most recently The Roads Not Taken (2020).

Acting credits

Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema poster
8.0

The film consists largely of a series of interviews with female filmmakers from several different countries and filmmaking eras. Some, such as Agnès Varda and Catherine Breillat (both from France), have been making films for decades in a conscious effort to provide an alternative to the male filmmaking model; others, such as Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia) and Carine Adler (England), are relative newcomers to directing, and their approaches seem more personal and less political. The film as a whole manages to cover some important topics in the feminist debate about film -- how does one construct a female gaze, how can one film nude bodies without objectifying the actors (of either sex), what constitutes a strong female role -- while also making it clear that “women’s film” comprises as many different approaches to filmmaking as there are female filmmakers.

Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema

2000

The Tango Lesson poster
6.4

On a trip to Paris Sally meets Pablo, a tango dancer. He starts teaching her to dance then she returns to London to work on some "projects". She visits Buenos Aires and learns more from Pablo's friends. Sally and Pablo meet again but this time their relationship changes, she realises they want different things from each other. On a trip to Buenos Aires they cement their friendship.

The Tango Lesson

1997

Cinefile: Reel Women poster
NR

Interviews with women directors working in Hollywood and Europe in the early 1990s, exploring the opportunities and obstacles that face them. A program made to accompany a Channel 4 season of films directed and produced by women.

Cinefile: Reel Women

1995

No artwork available
NR

A video diary of Orlando (1992) that features the actors and key crew members on the film as we travelogue through many of the shoots in Uzbekistan, inter-cut with on-set interviews.

Orlando In Uzbekistan

2010

No artwork available
NR

A vintage featurette about shooting Orlando (1992) in Russia. Has a narrator to guide through and plenty of behind the scenes footage of planning, meetings, scouting and more.

Orlando in Russia

2010

No artwork available
NR

Faces pass by in quickly edited, split-screen recordings. A 'structuralist' film in which the film material itself plays an important role. Grain, scratches and flickering give the film texture. The music is by Steve Reich.

Portraits

1972

Behind the camera

Ginger & Rosa poster
6.0

A look at the lives of two teenage girls - inseparable friends Ginger and Rosa -- growing up in 1960s London as the Cuban Missile Crisis looms, and the pivotal event the comes to redefine their relationship.

Ginger & Rosa

2012

Ginger & Rosa poster
6.0

A look at the lives of two teenage girls - inseparable friends Ginger and Rosa -- growing up in 1960s London as the Cuban Missile Crisis looms, and the pivotal event the comes to redefine their relationship.

Ginger & Rosa

2012

Orlando poster
6.9

England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request.

Orlando

1992

Orlando poster
6.9

England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request.

Orlando

1992

The Man Who Cried poster
6.1

A young refugee travels from Russia to America in search of her lost father and falls in love with a gypsy horseman.

The Man Who Cried

2000

The Man Who Cried poster
6.1

A young refugee travels from Russia to America in search of her lost father and falls in love with a gypsy horseman.

The Man Who Cried

2000

The Party poster
6.3

Various individuals think they’re coming together for a party in a private home, but a series of revelations results in a huge crisis that throws their belief systems – and their values – into total disarray.

The Party

2017

The Party poster
6.3

Various individuals think they’re coming together for a party in a private home, but a series of revelations results in a huge crisis that throws their belief systems – and their values – into total disarray.

The Party

2017

The Roads Not Taken poster
5.5

The film follows 24 hours in the life of father and daughter Leo and Molly, as they weave their way around New York City, until their ordinary but stressful day takes on a hallucinatory and epic quality.

The Roads Not Taken

2020

The Roads Not Taken poster
5.5

The film follows 24 hours in the life of father and daughter Leo and Molly, as they weave their way around New York City, until their ordinary but stressful day takes on a hallucinatory and epic quality.

The Roads Not Taken

2020

Yes poster
5.9

She is a scientist. He is a Lebanese doctor. They meet at a banquet and fall into a carefree, passionate relationship. But difficulties abound because of his heritage and her loveless marriage. She flies to Havana to sort things out on the beach and in the cabarets. She sends him a ticket, but harbors no illusions that He will join her in this Caribbean melting pot.

Yes

2005

Yes poster
5.9

She is a scientist. He is a Lebanese doctor. They meet at a banquet and fall into a carefree, passionate relationship. But difficulties abound because of his heritage and her loveless marriage. She flies to Havana to sort things out on the beach and in the cabarets. She sends him a ticket, but harbors no illusions that He will join her in this Caribbean melting pot.

Yes

2005

Look at Me poster
4.5

Rehearsals for a fundraising gala become the arena for a struggle between two men; one, the gala director and the other, a richly talented but unstable rock drummer. As their battle for expression and control escalates against a relentless rhythmic backdrop, their public and private selves explosively collide.

Look at Me

2022

Look at Me poster
4.5

Rehearsals for a fundraising gala become the arena for a struggle between two men; one, the gala director and the other, a richly talented but unstable rock drummer. As their battle for expression and control escalates against a relentless rhythmic backdrop, their public and private selves explosively collide.

Look at Me

2022

I Am an Ox, I Am a Horse, I Am a Man, I Am a Woman poster
6.0

This glasnost-era documentary, which incorporates footage from films from the 1920s through the 1980s, looks at the history of women in Russian cinema through the eyes of Russian women directors, actors, and scriptwriters. The film’s title refers to a WWII slogan about women doing the work of absent men in the fields and at home. Featuring Kira Muratova, Natalia Ryazantseva, Inna Churikova, Nonna Mordyukova, and others.

I Am an Ox, I Am a Horse, I Am a Man, I Am a Woman

1988

The Tango Lesson poster
6.4

On a trip to Paris Sally meets Pablo, a tango dancer. He starts teaching her to dance then she returns to London to work on some "projects". She visits Buenos Aires and learns more from Pablo's friends. Sally and Pablo meet again but this time their relationship changes, she realises they want different things from each other. On a trip to Buenos Aires they cement their friendship.

The Tango Lesson

1997

The Tango Lesson poster
6.4

On a trip to Paris Sally meets Pablo, a tango dancer. He starts teaching her to dance then she returns to London to work on some "projects". She visits Buenos Aires and learns more from Pablo's friends. Sally and Pablo meet again but this time their relationship changes, she realises they want different things from each other. On a trip to Buenos Aires they cement their friendship.

The Tango Lesson

1997

The Gold Diggers poster
5.6

An avant-garde examination of the relationship between women and money in society. Mixing musical, silent melodrama, and philosophical treatise into a post-punk, heady brew.

The Gold Diggers

1983

The Gold Diggers poster
5.6

An avant-garde examination of the relationship between women and money in society. Mixing musical, silent melodrama, and philosophical treatise into a post-punk, heady brew.

The Gold Diggers

1983

Rage poster
3.5

A schoolboy uses his cellphone camera to shoot intimate interviews with people working at a New York fashion house and secretly posts them on the internet. Result: a bitterly funny expose of an industry in crisis, during a week in which an accident on the runway becomes a murder investigation, and denial leads to devastation.

Rage

2009

Rage poster
3.5

A schoolboy uses his cellphone camera to shoot intimate interviews with people working at a New York fashion house and secretly posts them on the internet. Result: a bitterly funny expose of an industry in crisis, during a week in which an accident on the runway becomes a murder investigation, and denial leads to devastation.

Rage

2009

No artwork available
NR

A family embarks on an expedition to scatter the ashes of an archaeologist. As they pitch camp at one of the archaeologist's sites, sibling rivalries and buried tensions arise.

Alma

No artwork available
NR

A family embarks on an expedition to scatter the ashes of an archaeologist. As they pitch camp at one of the archaeologist's sites, sibling rivalries and buried tensions arise.

Alma

No artwork available
NR

A family embarks on an expedition to scatter the ashes of an archaeologist. As they pitch camp at one of the archaeologist's sites, sibling rivalries and buried tensions arise.

Alma