Since Snakeskin, Ashurst has directed a series of documentaries and a short film. Ashurst took a while to find filmmaking. She spent her high school years in Hornby after moving around New Zealand airbases as a young child with her Air Force father. After university, she travelled the world, working as a journalist, living on a houseboat on the Nile in Egypt and taking a classic road trip across America. At the age of 26 she returned to Christchurch and enrolled in film school. She immediately realised she had found her calling. “I just started living at film school. I filmed my own stuff and would spend all night there editing.