Aisling "Ash" Chin-Yee is an award-winning producer, writer, and director based in Montreal, Canada, and Los Angeles, California. She was recently named by The Hollywood Reporter as one of Canada's Most Powerful Women in Canadian Entertainment, 2026. In 2024, she was honoured with the Trailblazer Award by the Reel World Film Festival. In 2025, her latest film, The Pink Pill, won the Audience Award at DOC NYC and, when it premiered in March 2026, became the #1 streamed film on Paramount+. In television, she directed three episodes of the limited series Plan B, starring Patrick J. Adams, Karine Vanasse, and Francois Arnaud, that aired on CBC in spring 2023. Aisling won the Directors Guild of Canada award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Mini-series. Aisling serves as executive producer for Plan B's second season and for The Traitors Canada's upcoming fourth season.
In 2021, Aisling was celebrated on DOC NYC and HBO Documentary's annual 40 Under 40 list. She was named one of Canada's Rising Film Stars by Now Magazine in 2019. New Yorker Magazine hailed Aisling's work as "a genre unto itself" and named her documentary, No Ordinary Man, one of the magazine's Best Movies of 2021, which she co-directed with Chase Joynt, co-wrote with Amos Mac, and edited. The film is about Billy Tipton, a piano-playing jazzman from the Midwest who, after he died in 1989, was outed to the media as transgender. The documentary premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival and was named one of TIFF's Top Ten films. That same year, the film took home the award for Best Canadian Feature Film at Toronto's Inside Out LGBTQ Film Festival, and the Nouveaux Regards / New Visions Award at Les Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal (RIDM), Best Portrait Documentary at Cleveland International Film Festival, and the Audience Award for Best Documentary at Translations Film Festival. Aisling, also an editor, was awarded the prize for Best Documentary Editing by the Directors' Guild of Canada for No Ordinary Man.
Her feature film directorial debut, The Rest of Us, starring Heather Graham (Boogie Nights, The Hangover), Sophie Nélisse (Yellowjackets, Heated Rivalry), and Jodi Balfour (For All Mankind, Ted Lasso), premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2019. As a producer for over a decade, Aisling has been lauded for her fresh and unapologetic vision in feature films and documentaries. Aisling produced the award-winning feature film Rhymes for Young Ghouls, which was a TIFF Top 10 film and won Best Director at the Vancouver International Film Festival, as well as the award-winning feature documentary Last Woman Standing that same year. 2014 marked her year as a writer and director with the short film Sound Asleep, which premiered at the Lucerne International Film Festival. In 2015, she directed the multi-award-winning documentary Synesthesia, which won Best Short Documentary at the International Crossroads Film Festival. She produced the gritty urban drama, The Saver, released in the Spring of 2016.
Alongside filmmaking, Aisling is an active change-maker for equality and diverse representation on and off-screen. In 2017, she co-founded the #AfterMeToo movement, which includes a fund, a roundtable series, and a report that brings to light the issue of sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry. In 2018, she was selected in the inaugural cohort of professionals in the 50 Women Can Change the World in Media and Entertainment in Hollywood. In 2019, Aisling received the TIFF Canning Fellowship.
Aisling was advised, mentored, and trained for many years as a writer, director, and editor by her late partner, the filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée. They shared a love for character, hard work, the power of music, and a commitment to deeply honest storytelling.
Aisling is represented by Raquelle David at New Story Entertainment and attorney Katherine McClure at Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Kaller, Gellman, Meigs & Fox, and Drew MacKenzie at Great North Artists in Canada.
Aisling is a Berlinale Talent Alumni, a Rotterdam Producer's Network Alumni, a Tribeca Film Institute Alumni, a TIFF Filmmaker Lab, and the prestigious Academy Women Directors' Program, and the Directors Guild of Canada Mentorship. She is a prominent voice promoting inclusion and challenging the status quo, both as a creator and an advocate for other women and diverse perspectives.
Outspoken, driven, and passionate about storytelling with an unapologetic voice.
Fluent Films is committed to creating entertainment that represents and collaborates with diverse voices and perspectives, while telling amazing stories. Aisling Chin-Yee is currently developing several feature films as writer, director, and executive producer.
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