Shalom Almond

Shalom Almond is an Australian documentary filmmaker. Her first feature documentary was The Love Market, about the girls living on the street in Vietnam. She is especially known for two documentary films about women in the Adelaide Women's Prison, Prisoners and Pups (2018), and Songs Inside (2024), which won several awards.

Early life and education Shalom Almond was born around 1978. and studied filmmaking

In 1998, a short film made by Almond and filmmaking partner Tamsin Sharp, Scrabble, won Best Script and the Film Makers' Choice awards, and was named the Most Outstanding Film at the South Australian Young Film Makers Festival.

In June 1999, Almond, along with David Lipschitz and Tamsin Sharp, made a documentary film to accompany an exhibition of Jewish history in Adelaide in the Migration Museum, Tree of Life. The film was screened on ABC Television's Snapshots as well as Channel 9's Postcards series. In September of that year, Almond and Sharp were making a film set at Belair railway station, titled 1 Day, 2 Tracks, having obtained funding for post-production of the film from Mike Piper of Piper Films.

In 2010 Almond made Chasing Shadows for ABC Television, struggling to find success in the music industry. In 2011 it won the Best Documentary Award at the South Australian Screen Awards. The title is taken from Caper's former backing band, S.H.A.D.O.W.S. Almond and Darcy became friends. Chasing Shadows was directed, written, and shot by Almond; produced by Almond and Lauren Drewery; and edited by Anthony Cirroco. The original score was composed by Ashley Close.

In 2011, she made a short film commissioned by the Media Resource Centre, Helping Hand Aged Care and ECH Inc, called Telling My Story. In it, older South Australians with short-term memory loss and the early stages of dementia share stories of their life. In 2012, Almond made Love Heart Baby, about the use of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis IVF.

My Long Neck (2013) is about a Kayan woman from Burma who, as part of her culture, wears 16 coils of brass around her neck, showing that she is a "Long Neck Karen" woman. Her neck is elongated by the tradition, which causes the collarbone to be pressed down, and the women become tourist attractions, and are known as "human zoos". Almond wrote, directed, and co-produced the film, with Katrina Lucas, and it was shot by Helen Carter. My Long Neck was filmed in the Mae Hong Son area of northern Thailand. A 2018 article about the film comments that "the potential 'object' of the film, Maja, becomes a co-filmmaker and agent of interpretation of human circumstances", thus becoming a voice for a marginalised people as well as telling her personal story.

Prisoners and Pups In 2017, Almond was commissioned by ABC Television to make a documentary about Adelaide Women's Prison. The resulting film, Prisoners and Pups, showed a group of women who trained ex-racing greyhounds, socialising them and transforming them into pets to be put up for adoption. After spending four months talking to the women and filming at the prison, Ex-prisoners who had featured in the film joined a Q&A at some of the screenings.

Songs Inside

In October 2018, Almond won the inaugural Lottie Lyell Award, which included A$20,000 cash, to develop her next project, then titled Through Prisoner Eyes. The award was presented by Gillian Armstrong at the Adelaide Film Festival.

Songs Inside documents the work of Barkindji singer-songwriter Nancy Bates, who initiated and runs a program in women's prisons called "Songbirds", teaching inmates how to play musical instruments and write songs about their lives. Bates was influenced by Archie Roach, who took her into prisons alongside Jack Charles, who worked with the prisoners by "connecting through storytelling". The Songbirds program culminates a performance by the women in prison accompanied by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, after 16 weeks from conception and around six weeks to write eight songs. The lyrics and ukulele music was sent to conductor Julian Ferraretto to create the orchestral arrangements for the performance.

The film premiered at the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival, and received the Audience Award for Feature Documentary. In 2025 it was selected for screening at the Sydney Film Festival, where it won Documentary Australia Award, and Melbourne International Film Festival. It won the prestigious CinefestOZ Film Prize, the richest film prize in Australia, in 2025. Several screenings were been accompanied by a musical performance and a Q&A with former inmates who had been Songbirds. In October 2025 the film was screened for Flinders University criminology staff and students, and Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology members, followed by a Q&A. The film was scheduled for screening on ABC TV and ABC iview on 1 December 2025, but was pulled from the schedule on the day due to an editorial issue. It was rescheduled and screened on 22 December 2025, also becoming available on ABC iview.

On 6 December 2025, it was nominated for several AACTA Awards in the 15th AACTA Awards, to be awarded in February 2026: Best Documentary; Best Original Music Score in a Documentary (Amanda Brown); and Best Sound in a Documentary (Tom Heuzenroeder).

Ongoing work In March 2025, after being on the waitlist for years, Almond, along with frequent collaborator producer Katrina Lucas, took up a tenancy at the Adelaide Studios in Glenside.

From 2020 to 2022, Almond was responsible for the filmmaking aspect of a performance developed by Emma Beech during a creative development residency at Vitalstatistix theatre company in Port Adelaide. There were work-in-progress showings of The Photo Box in April 2021, Photo Box was commissioned by Brink Productions and Vitalstatistix, and presented as part of the 2022 Adelaide Festival in March 2022.

In September 2021, she was filmmaker on the theatre production Me, My Dad and the Holy Ghost at Rumpus in Bowden, in which Katrina Lucas performed.

Other activities On 22 August 2024, as part of the 13th edition of the Artists on the Inside exhibition, Almond was a panel member for a discussion held by the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre and the Department for Correctional Services, titled "The art of desistance: Creativity, Culture and Vocational Pathways", facilitated by Rick Sarre.

On 19 July 2025, Almond curated a programme of music documentaries at the Mercury Cinema, as part of the inaugural "Supersonic" festival, created as part of the Illuminate Adelaide annual event in the city. The film programme ran from 6pm until 2am, under the title "Songs of the Revolution", and included Almond's film Songs Inside.

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