Violeta Ayala

Who is Violeta Ayala?

Violeta Ayala is an indigenous film director, producer and writer best known for the highly controversial documentary Stolen, that uncovers slavery in the Sahrawi refugee camps in south-western Algeria and in Western Sahara.

Ayala has lived in Australia and the USA. She has a degree in journalism from Charles Sturt University in Australia.

In 2006 Ayala began her collaboration with Dan Fallshaw on Between the Oil and the Deep Blue Sea, a documentary set in Mauritania, about corruption in the oil industry, that follows the investigations of world renowned mathematician Yahyia Ould Hamidoune against Woodside Petroleum. On the same subject Ayala co-wrote Slick Operator an article published in the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald.

Ayala is an alumnus of the Film Independent Documentary Lab, the Berlinale Talent Campus, HotDocs Forum, Britdoc Good Pitch, IFP New York and a Tribeca Film Institute Fellow. Ayala has given masterclasses at the National Film and Television School in London and at the Scottish Documentary Institute as part of the Bridging The Gap Masterclasses.