Anna Auster’s the kind of editor who’s got her fingerprints all over some of the most compelling documentaries floating around your streaming queue. Seriously, if you’ve watched anything remotely gripping on Netflix, PBS, Showtime, Nat Geo, or Discovery in the last two decades, there’s a good chance she’s been in the editing bay pulling the strings. Born up in Aspen, Colorado—yeah, the ski town—she somehow swapped snowy slopes for the chaos of New York and never looked back. You want credentials? She’s teamed up with some heavy-hitting filmmakers, the kind that walk away from festivals with trophies and don’t let it go to their heads (well, maybe a little). Her style? It’s sharp, intuitive, a little bit gutsy. You can tell she loves the messy, human stuff—the imperfections, the quirks, the moments you almost don’t want the camera to catch. That’s her wheelhouse. And get this: after two decades of editing other people’s stories, Anna finally pointed the camera where she wanted and took the director’s chair for her own short doc, “Holky: The Steven Holcomb Story.” It’s personal, it’s raw, it’s the kind of film that sticks with you. She’s not the kind of filmmaker who just fades into the credits—you remember her work, even if you don’t see her name right away. If you’re chasing documentaries that actually hit you in the gut, Anna’s probably somewhere behind the scenes, making sure every frame lands.
