About Us
Set up by award-winning filmmakers Stephen Walker and Sally George in 2006, Walker George Films is a multi award-winning production company dedicated to making the sort of high-quality films which have won Stephen and Sally widespread praise over many years as documentary directors and producers.
Stephen Walker
Stephen Walker has directed over 30 films including Young@Heart, a documentary feature film about an American chorus of pensioners who sing rock music, which was released by Fox Searchlight in 250 US cinemas in 2008. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won 23 audience awards in film festivals around the world, including Paris, Sydney, Warsaw, Los Angeles, Nashville and Atlanta.
Stephen has twice been voted as one of Britain’s top ten television directors by the UK’s industry-leading Broadcast magazine.
Other films include: The Day I Got My Sight Back (BBC), a documentary about a blind man who has an astonishing eye operation to restore his sight; Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story and Operation Mincemeat, two BBC films presented by best-selling author Ben Macintyre about extraordinary spy stories from World War Two. Mincemeat was nominated for both the Grierson and Broadcast awards for Best Documentary.
A Boy Called Alex (Channel 4), a documentary about a teenage musical prodigy and Eton schoolboy who suffers from an incurable disease, cystic fibrosis, was nominated for three BAFTAs (Best Documentary, Best Director and Best Editing), and a Royal Television Society award for Best Documentary.
Before co-founding Walker George Films, Stephen directed Hiroshima, A Day That Shook The World (BBC), nominated for three Emmys including Best Director and Best Cinematography, winner of an Emmy for Best Music and Sound; Faking It: Punk to Conductor (Channel 4), winner of a BAFTA and a Rose D’Or for Best Documentary; and Hardcore (Channel 4), the story of a young British woman who enters the American porn industry, nominated for a Grierson Award for Best Documentary.
Drama films include Prisoners in Time, starring the late John Hurt (winner of a Writer’s Guild award for Best Television Drama).
Writing
Stephen has written King of Cannes: Madness, Mayhem and the Movies (Bloomsbury & Penguin) and Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima (Harper Collins), a New York Times Bestseller. Shockwave is currently in development as a TV series with Working Title Films. Screenwriters include legendary playwright Tom Stoppard and currently the Oscar-nominated Hossein Amini (Wings of the Dove, The Alienist).
Stephen's latest book Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave our Planet and Journey into Space is the gripping story of three extraordinary months in the spring of 1961 as the USA and USSR competed to put the first human in space. Published by Harper Collins, it received stellar reviews ('A thrilling piece of storytelling' Sunday Times, 'Scintillating' Financial Times, 'Cinematic' The Spectator, 'Just a wonderful book, I cannot recommend it enough' Giles Coren, Times Radio, 'A fine account told with verve' Wall Street Journal) and was a Book of the Year in The Times, Financial Times and Daily Telegraph. It has since been published in seven foreign languages.
Sally George
After a long and distinguished career in television, Sally is now practising as a couples psychotherapist in London.
She produced and directed more than 20 films for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV, including Young@Heart. As well as producing the documentary feature film, she also directed the highly successful rock music videos featuring the chorus of pensioners, which have received millions of hits on YouTube.
Sally also co-directed The Day I Got My Sight Back (BBC) and produced Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies (BBC), and Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story (BBC).
As well as producing A Boy Called Alex, Sally also produced a follow-up documentary for Channel 4, Alex: A Passion for Life, when Alex was a 19 year old choral scholar at King’s College Cambridge and a member of its world-famous choir.
Other films she has directed include Brothers and Sisters in Love (ITV), a remarkable documentary about one of the most secret taboos of all – incestuous love. The film features siblings who never met as children and yet fall in love when they meet as adults.
She also produced George Melly’s Last Stand (BBC), an intimate portrayal of the last months of the legendary jazzman’s life, nominated for a Grierson award; and Silver Surfers (Channel 4), a film about seniors who use the internet to find love.
Before co-founding Walker George Films, Sally directed two films for the BBC about the children forced to leave their homes and their parents in pre-war Nazi Germany and flee to Britain. No Time to Say Goodbye won the Judges Prize at the Festival dei Popoli, Florence, and Whatever Happened to Susi, the true story of a woman in search of her German-Jewish identity, won the Prix D’Argent at the Cannes FIPA Film Festival.
Sally was the Series Producer on BBC1’s The Human Face with John Cleese, nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Factual Series.
She also produced two BBC films with Gerald Scarfe, the legendary cartoonist and designer, Scarfe on Sex and Scarfe on Class, and directed two much-loved films on poetry for BBC2, presented by Daisy Goodwin. Essential Poems for Britain and Essential Poems for Christmas featured, among other actors, Timothy West, Prunella Scales, Jack Dee, Rhys Ifans, Dougray Scott, John Hurt, Sheila Hancock and Liza Tarbuck.