Fav Directors
List activity
34 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
86 people
- Writer
- Director
- Producer
The most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel was born in a small town (Calzada de Calatrava) in the impoverished Spanish region of La Mancha. He arrived in Madrid in 1968, and survived by selling used items in the flea-market called El Rastro. Almodóvar couldn't study filmmaking because he didn't have the money to afford it. Besides, the filmmaking schools were closed in early 70s by Franco's government. Instead, he found a job in the Spanish phone company and saved his salary to buy a Super 8 camera. From 1972 to 1978, he devoted himself to make short films with the help of of his friends. The "premieres" of those early films were famous in the rapidly growing world of the Spanish counter-culture. In few years, Almodóvar became a star of "La Movida", the pop cultural movement of late 70s Madrid. His first feature film, Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom (1980), was made in 16 mm and blown-up to 35 mm for public release. In 1987, he and his brother Agustín Almodóvar established their own production company: El Deseo, S. A. The "Almodóvar phenomenon" has reached all over the world, making his films very popular in many countries.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Agnès Varda was born on 30 May 1928 in Ixelles, Belgium. She was a director and writer, known for Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Vagabond (1985) and Faces Places (2017). She was married to Jacques Demy. She died on 29 March 2019 in Paris, France.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
The women who both attracted and frightened him and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII - inspired the dreams that Fellini started recording in notebooks in the 1960s. Life and dreams were raw material for his films. His native Rimini and characters like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would be remembered in several films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real life role of journalist and caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds "Cico and Pallina". Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became his real life wife from October 30, 1943, until his death half a century later. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1940 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Rome, Open City (1945) and made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisan (1946). On that film he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Louis Malle, the descendant of a French nobleman who made a fortune in beet sugar during the Napoleonic Wars, created films that explored life and its meaning. Malle's family discouraged his early interest in film but, in 1950, allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris. His résumé showed that he had worked as an assistant to film maker Robert Bresson when Malle was hired by underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau to be a camera operator on the Calypso. Cousteau soon promoted him to be co-director of The Silent World (1956) ("The Silent World"). Years later, Cousteau called Malle the best underwater cameraman he ever had. Malle's third film, The Lovers (1958) ("The Lovers"), starring Jeanne Moreau broke taboos against on screen eroticism. In 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the obscenity conviction of an Ohio theater that had exhibited "Les Amants." A director during the Nouvelle Vague, New Wave" of 1950s and 1960s (though technically not considered a Nouvelle Vague auteur), he also made films on the other side of the Atlantic, starting with Pretty Baby (1978), the film that made Brooke Shields an international superstar. The actress who played a supporting role in that film was given a starring role in Malle's next American film, Atlantic City (1980). That promising actress was Susan Sarandon.
In one of his later French films, Goodbye, Children (1987), Malle was able to find catharsis for an experience that had haunted him since the German occupation of France in World War II. At age 12, he was sent to a Catholic boarding school near Paris that was a refuge for several Jewish students, one of them was Malle's rival for academic honors and his friend. A kitchen worker at the school with a grudge became an informant. The priest who was the principal was arrested and the Jewish students were sent off to concentration camps.
In his final film, Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), Malle again penetrated the veil between life and art as theater people rehearse Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." In that film, Malle worked again with theater director Andre Gregory and actor-playwright Wallace Shawn, the conversationalists of My Dinner with Andre (1981). Malle was married to Candice Bergen, and he succumbed to lymphoma in 1995.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
The films of Claire Denis frequently explore the fragile connections between people and the ways in which the most seemingly inconsequential relationship can have life-changing effects. At the heart of Denis' cinema is a fascination with the delights and difficulties of belonging and otherness, the gravity and gift of foreignness. Often revolving around reactions to the intrusion of the other, be it a stranger or foreigner, Denis' films insist on the vital necessity of the unusual to coexist within the "normal" world. In films such as I Can't Sleep (1994) and Nénette and Boni (1996), Denis captures the mercurial and instant shifts in tone, from the pleasurably sensual to the menacing or the simply unaccountable, caused by the intrusion of the strange into the fabric of the everyday. In Denis' films one often feels that all is well even as worlds collide and collapse or, conversely, that a grave challenge underlies the seemingly calm moments. While Denis' childhood in French colonial Africa is reflected most directly in the African setting shared by her debut feature Chocolat (1988) and best-known film, Beau Travail (1999), this encounter with the intimacies and injustices of colonialism resounds throughout much of her work. Also shaping Denis' unique vision are the apprenticeships she served, just out of film school, under a variety of renowned directors, including Jacques Rivette, Wim Wenders, Dusan Makavejev and Jim Jarmusch - an eclectic company that is itself suggestive of the unique juxtaposition of careful craft and seeming casualness within Denis' work. Denis has often spoken of her shock as a young woman at discovering the novels of Faulkner that have exerted such a major influence over postwar French cinema. For Denis, Faulkner "was a plunge into the senses, into terror and the pain of his characters." These words describe Denis' films as well. But whatever terror and pain her characters may sometimes experience is outmeasured by the depths of Denis' deep affection for them and by her curiosity in their experiences of pleasure as well as fear. Even in the unsettling Trouble Every Day (2001), the not-infrequent catastrophes in Denis' films provoke a sense of wonder at, and even delight in, the sheer weight of existence.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Jane Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and now lives in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Having graduated with a BA in Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, and a BA, with a painting major, at Sydney College of the Arts in 1979, she began filmmaking in the early 1980s, attending the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Her first short film, Peel (1982) won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986. Her other short films include A Girl's Own Story (1984), Passionless Moments (1983), After Hours (1985) and the tele-feature 2 Friends (1986), all of which won Australian and international awards. She co-wrote and directed her first feature film, Sweetie (1989), which won the Georges Sadoul prize in 1989 for Best Foreign Film, as well as the LA Film Critics' New Generation Award in 1990, the American Independant Spirit Award for Best Foreign Feature, and the Australian Critics' Award for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress. She followed this with An Angel at My Table (1990), a dramatization based on the autobiographies of Janet Frame which won some seven prizes, including the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1990. It was also awarded prizes at the Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals, again winning the American Independent Spirit Award, and was voted the most popular film at the 1990 Sydney Film Festival. The Piano (1993) won the Palme D'Or at Cannes, making her the first woman ever to win the prestigious award. She also captured an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 1993 Oscars, while also being nominated for Best Director.- Director
- Editor
- Writer
Alain Resnais was born on 3 June 1922 in Vannes, Morbihan, France. He was a director and editor, known for Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Same Old Song (1997) and My American Uncle (1980). He was married to Sabine Azéma and Florence Malraux. He died on 1 March 2014 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.- Director
- Writer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Patrice Leconte was born on 12 November 1947 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for Ridicule (1996), La fille sur le pont (1999) and Man on the Train (2002).- Director
- Writer
- Actress
Chantal Akerman was born on 6 June 1950 in Brussels, Belgium. She was a director and writer, known for The Meetings of Anna (1978), I, You, He, She (1974) and A Couch in New York (1996). She was married to Sonia Wieder-Atherton. She died on 5 October 2015 in Paris, France.- Writer
- Director
- Actress
Céline Sciamma was born on 12 November 1978 in Pontoise, Val-d'Oise, France. She is a writer and director, known for Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Petite Maman (2021) and Tomboy (2011).- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Christian Petzold was born in Hilden in 1960. After studying German and Drama at the Freie Universität Berlin, he enrolled in Berlin's German Academy for Film and Television (DFFB). There he studied film direction while at same time working as an assistant director to Harun Farocki and Hartmut Bitomsky. After graduation, Christian Petzold made several interesting TV films. In 2000, his first theatrical feature, The State I Am In (2000), about a couple of left-wing terrorists, is released and makes a strong impression and earning its director both the German Film Award and the Hessischer Best Film Award. By 2012, this prolific creator has managed to make two more TV films and five additional features, among which Yella (2007), the sensitive portrait of a young woman who tries to escape the grip of her violent and possessive husband, and especially Barbara (2012), which won the 'Best Director' award at the Berlinale. This fine drama plunges the viewer into the everyday life atmosphere of the GDR like few films before and serves as a showcase for its director's talents.- Director
- Actress
- Writer
Sofia Coppola was born on May 14, 1971 in New York City, New York, USA as Sofia Carmina Coppola. She is a director, known for Somewhere (2010), Lost in Translation (2003), and Marie Antoinette (2006). She has been married to Thomas Mars since August 27, 2011. They have two daughters, Romy and Cosima. She was previously married to Spike Jonze.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Sébastien Lifshitz was born on 21 January 1968 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for Wild Side (2004), Little Girl (2020) and Casa Susanna (2022).- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Alice Rohrwacher was born on 29 December 1981 in Fiesole, Tuscany, Italy. She is a director and writer, known for Happy as Lazzaro (2018), La Chimera (2023) and The Wonders (2014).- Director
- Writer
- Production Manager
Alain Guiraudie was born on 15 July 1964 in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, Aveyron, France. He is a director and writer, known for Stranger by the Lake (2013), That Old Dream That Moves (2001) and The King of Escape (2009).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
A literature and philosophy graduate, with extensive post-graduate work at Oxford on German literature, Polish-born Pawel Pawlikowski started as a documentary filmmaker in British television.
His second feature, Last Resort (2000), earned him international critical acclaim at numerous festivals, including Toronto and Sundance, and won the 2001 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for "Most Promising Newcomer in British Film."
His next film, My Summer of Love (2004), won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTA Awards in 2005.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Andrea Arnold was born on 5 April 1961 in Dartford, Kent, England, UK. She is an actress and director, known for American Honey (2016), Fish Tank (2009) and Red Road (2006).- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Christophe Honoré was born on 10 April 1970 in Carhaix-Plouguer, Finistère, France. He is a writer and director, known for Sorry Angel (2018), Love Songs (2007) and The Beautiful Person (2008).- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Kelly Reichardt was born and raised in Miami-Dade Country, Florida, to a family of police officers. She had an interest in photography from a very young age. She started by using her father's camera, which he used for photographing crime scenes. She went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. In the summer of 2005, Reichardt directed Old Joy (2006), which premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. It was the first American film to win the Tiger award at the Rotterdam Film Festival and opened at the Film Forum in New York City. Reichardt's first feature, River of Grass (1994), a sun-drenched noir that was shot in her home town of Dade County, was cited as one of the best films of 1995 by the Boston Globe, Village Voice, Film Comment, the New York Daily News, Paper Magazine, and the San Francisco Guardian.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
João Pedro Rodrigues was born in 1966 in Lisbon, Portugal. He is a director and writer, known for Will-o'-the-Wisp (2022), Morrer Como Um Homem (2009) and The Last Time I Saw Macao (2012).- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and even antigay, he completed 44 projects between 1966 and 1982, the majority of which can be characterized as highly intelligent social melodramas. His prodigious output was matched by a wild, self-destructive libertinage that earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema (as well as its central figure.) Known for his trademark leather jacket and grungy appearance, Fassbinder cruised the bar scene by night, looking for sex and drugs, yet he maintained a flawless work ethic by day. Actors and actresses recount disturbing stories of his brutality toward them, yet his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social misfits and his hatred of institutionalized violence. Some find his cinema needlessly controversial and avant-garde; others accuse him of surrendering to the Hollywood ethos. It is best said that he drew forth strong emotional reactions from all he encountered, both in his personal and professional lives, and this provocative nature can be experienced posthumously through reviewing his artistic legacy.
Fassbinder was born into a bourgeois Bavarian family in 1945. His father was a doctor and his mother a translator. In order to have time for her work, his mother frequently sent him the movies, a practice that gave birth to his obsession with the medium. Later in life, he would claim that he saw a film nearly every day and sometimes as many as three or four. At the age of 15, Fassbinder defiantly declared his homosexuality, soon after which he left school and took a job. He studied theater in the mid-sixties at the Fridl-Leonhard Studio in Munich and joined the Action Theater (aka, Anti-Theater) in 1967. Unlike the other major auteurs of the New German Cinema (e.g., Schlöndorff, Herzog and Wenders) who started out making movies, Fassbinder acquired an extensive stage background that is evident throughout his work. Additionally, he learned how to handle all phases of production, from writing and acting to direction and theater management. This versatility later surfaced in his films where, in addition to some of the aforementioned responsibilities, Fassbinder served as composer, production designer, cinematographer, producer and editor. [So boundless was his energy, in fact, that he appeared in 30 projects of other directors.] In his theater years, he also developed a repertory company that included his mother, two of his wives and various male and female lovers. Coupled with his ability to serve in nearly any crew capacity, this gave him the ability to produce his films quickly and on extremely low budgets.
Success was not immediate for Fassbinder. His first feature length film, a gangster movie called Love Is Colder Than Death (1969) was greeted by catcalls at the Berlin Film Festival. His next piece, Katzelmacher (1969), was a minor critical success, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim. It featured Jorgos, an emigrant from Greece, who encounters violent xenophobic slackers in moving into an all-German neighborhood. This kind of social criticism, featuring alienated characters unable to escape the forces of oppression, is a constant throughout Fassbinder's diverse oeuvre. In subsequent years, he made such controversial films about human savagery such as Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) and Whity (1971) before scoring his first domestic commercial success with The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972). This moving portrait of a street vendor crushed by the betrayal and his own futility is considered a masterpiece, as is his first international success Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) (Fear Eats the Soul). With a wider audience for his efforts, however, some critics contend that Fassbinder began to sell out with big budget projects such as Despair (1978), Lili Marleen (1981) and Lola (1981). In retrospect, however, it seems that the added fame simply enabled Fassbinder to explore various kinds of filmmaking, including such "private" works as In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) and The Third Generation (1979), two films about individual experience and feelings. His greatest success came with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) (The Marriage of Maria Braun), chronicling the rise and fall of a German woman in the wake of World War II. Other notable movies include The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Fox and His Friends (1975), Satan's Brew (1976) and Querelle (1982), all focused on gay and lesbian themes and frequently with a strongly pornographic edge.
His death is a perfect picture of the man and his legend. On the night of June 10, 1982, Fassbinder took an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills. When he was found, the unfinished script for a version of Rosa Luxemburg was lying next to him. So boundless was his drive and creativity that, throughout his downward spiral and even in the moment of his death, Fassbinder never ceased to be productive.- Actress
- Writer
- Director
A tall, slim brunette with deep red puckered lips, Valérie Donzelli plays wonderfully clumsy, gawky, goofy girls, failed seductresses and successful charm freaks. She is also a noted film director, whose works explore very different registers, which she does not hesitate to mix whether comic, offbeat, sentimental, tragic, sometimes with little concern for the Cartesian spirit.
The granddaughter of painter-sculptor Dante Donzelli, Valérie was born in 1973 in Épinal, a town in the North-East of France. At 18 she went to Paris to study studied architecture, but after a while decided instead to become an actress, which was encouraged by a young performer she met, Jérémie Elkaïm, who later became her companion..
She soon landed a title role, that of a neurotic young mother in Sandrine Veysset's « Martha... Martha » (2001). The next parts in movies were only supporting roles (« Who Killed Bambi? », « The Best Day of My Life », « In His Hands ») but she was treated better by television, for instance in the series « Clara Sheller », in which she played Clara Sheller's best friend and which made her known to the general public..
But playing was not enough for Valerie Donzelli. She was just itching to write and direct (and produce, which she did later in her career). It was not long before she took action, often with the collaboration of her life partner Jérémie Elkaïm as her leading man and/or co-writer. After two shorts, she made a notable feature, « The Queen of Hearts » (2009), in which she imposed the character of the insecure Adèle, both comic and pathetic, who finds it hard to recover after a painful breakup. A breakup that took place in real life between Jérémie and her, although the ex-pair remained in good terms afterwards and went on working together, the most striking of their work together being unquestionably « War is Declared » (2011), which tells the heart-breaking story of how their young couple went through the terrible illness of their 18-month-old child. It was both a great critical and box-office success.
Less of a hit at the box office but interesting for their artistic options though were « Hand in Hand », (2012) the story of a a passionate love affair that literally sticks together a dance teacher and a young glass-worker as well as « Marguerite et Julien » (2015), a Romeo and Juliet-like story between... a brother and a sister.
Her last picture to-date, « Notre dame » features two stars, Paris's Notre Dame cathedral filmed a few months before the April 2019 fire that devastated the building and Valérie Donzelli herself, who more or less reprises the role of the clumsy, overwhelmed heroine of « The Queen of hearts », now turned an architect (doesn't it remind you of something?) - caught up in a reality that's beyond her.
Between the films she makes, those she plays in generally interesting films such as the hilarious Swiss comedy « Longwave » (2013) or the more serious « The White Knights » (2015).
A hyperactive creator and performer, Valérie Donzelli will certainly continue to amaze us, to amuse us and to make us think for yet a long time to come- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Maren Ade was born in Karlsruhe on 12 December 1976 to a couple of teachers.She studied cinema at Munich's Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film. As of 2001 she co-founded, together with Janine Jackowski, a fellow graduate from HFF, the "Komplizen" film company. It is through Komplizen that Maren would later co-produce, among others, "Arabian Nights", Miguel Gomes' masterpiece. After two shorts in 2000 and 2001 made under the auspices of her film school, she co-produced, wrote and and directed Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen (2003), her first feature. A grueling drama about the difficult beginnings of a new teacher, the movie impressed both audiences and critics. Incidentally, it is of interest to specify that its school scenes were entirely shot within the walls of the educational institution where her mother was teaching at the time. This promising effort was followed six years later by Everyone Else (2009), which although taking place in a totally different setting (the Sardinian seaside in the glory of Summer) also concerns characters unsure of themselves. A taut drama as well, it revolves around two holiday making newly married couples and describes in a Roman Polanski-like manner the wicked relationships they share. But her greatest success came in 2015 and 2016 with Toni Erdmann (2016), an offbeat comedy with a philosophical approach, which enthused the festival-goers at Cannes, allegedly making them "roar with laughter", and later making unexpected profit in art houses throughout the world. And it is true that a father playing dirty tricks on his daughter (meant to make her realize she is wasting her life) is no ordinary entertainment. As a matter of fact, after only three full-length movies to her credit, Maren Ade has become a name that counts in today's German cinema.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Ken Russell tried several professions before choosing to become a film director; he was a still photographer and a dancer and he even served in the Army, but film was his destiny. He began by making several short films which paved the way for his brilliant television films of the 1960s that are acclaimed for his attention to detail and opulent visuals. His third feature film Women in Love (1969) was a triumph that made him known internationally. In the 1970s, his talent truly blossomed. Over the next two decades he would direct a succession of remarkable films, most containing the trademark flamboyance that critics generally dismiss but many find engrossing. He will forever be remembered as a controversial, visionary artist with something of a third eye for oddball dramas with captivating images and themes.- Writer
- Editor
- Director
Robin Campillo was born on 16 August 1962 in Mohammédia, Morocco. He is a writer and editor, known for Eastern Boys (2013), 120 BPM (2017) and The Class (2008).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Born in 1966 in Salta in the North of Argentina,Lucrecia Martel settled down in Buenos Aires where she attended the ENERC (National Film School). She started by directing a few shorts among which Historias Breves I: Rey muerto (1995), which garnered several awards in the international film festival circuit. From 1995 to 1998, she made a series of documentaries for TV as well as a children's TV programme, hailed by the Argentinian press for its unusual dark humor. From 2001 until today, Lucrecia Martel has managed to make three very personal feature films, The Swamp (2001), The Holy Girl (2004) and The Headless Woman (2008), in which she explores her favorite theme, troubled minds.- Director
- Writer
- Actress
Catherine Corsini was born on 18 May 1956 in Dreux, Eure-et-Loir, France. She is a director and writer, known for The Divide (2021), Summertime (2015) and Three Worlds (2012).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Isabel Coixet was born on 9 April 1960 in Sant Adrià de Besòs, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. She is a director and writer, known for My Life Without Me (2003), The Secret Life of Words (2005) and The Bookshop (2017).- Director
- Writer
- Actress
Cinema came into Mia Hansen-Løve's life when she was seventeen, as Olivier Assayas made her start as an actress in Late August, Early September (1998). Two years later, he gave her the part of "Aline" in his Les Destinées (2000). Their artistic collaboration was coupled by a union in real life, Mia and Olivier becoming life companions. In 2001, Mia Hansen-Løve began studying at the municipal Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Paris' 10th district but she dropped our after two years to contribute instead to the famous film magazine "Les Cahiers du Cinéma", where Olivier Assayas also wrote. In 2001, she tried her hand at directing and, as of the first day of shooting, discovered that this WAS what she wanted to do. The result was Après mûre réflexion (2004). Since then, although aged only twenty-eight, she has already made two more films, All Is Forgiven (2007) and Father of My Children (2009), both acclaimed by the critics, both showing consistent thematic and stylistic unity.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Lynne Ramsay was born on 5 December 1969 in Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland, UK. She is a director and writer, known for You Were Never Really Here (2017), We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) and Ratcatcher (1999). She was previously married to Rory Stewart Kinnear.- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Maïwenn (sometimes credited as Maïwenn Besco or her birth name Maïwenn Le Besco, born 17 April 1976) is a French actress, film director and screenwriter.
Maïwenn Le Besco was born in Les Lilas, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, a suburban area east of Paris. Maïwenn is of mixed Breton, Vietnamese, French, and Algerian descent. Her Algerian ancestry comes from her maternal grandfather. Maïwenn's mother, Catherine Belkhodja, introduced her to the entertainment industry at a young age, an experience later chronicled by Maïwenn in her one-woman shows Le Pois Chiche (The Chickpea) and I'm an Actress.
Maïwenn starred in several films as a child, then teen, actress--notably as the child version of the lead role played by Isabelle Adjani in the hit film One Deadly Summer (1983).
Following her marriage to director Luc Besson and the birth of their daughter in 1993, Maïwenn interrupted her career for several years. During this period, she only appeared in a supporting part in Besson's Léon: The Professional (1994), in which she was credited as Ouin-Ouin. She also directed the film's making-of. Perhaps Maïwenn's most internationally-seen film role was her appearance as the alien Diva Bazina in Besson's The Fifth Element (1997).
After her breakup with Besson, Maïwenn returned to France. She performed as a standup comedian in an autobiographical one-woman-show, and reentered the movie business after several filmmakers saw her comedy routine in Paris. She appeared in several notable movies, including the horror film High Tension (2003), in which she starred opposite Cécile de France. By the time the film came out in 2003, she had decided she wanted to try directing. In 2006, she directed her first feature film, the semi-autobiographical Pardonnez-moi (2006). According to Maïwenn, after Besson learned she planned to use her own money to produce the film, he told her "You need to immediately stop what you're doing. You're crazy. Nobody puts their own money into a movie." After seeing the film he apologized, saying she was right on this occasion. Her second film was All About Actresses (2009), in which she appears as herself making a documentary. She achieved international recognition when her third film, the social drama Polisse (2011), won the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. All three films feature Maïwenn with a camera, stemming from a childhood fascination and her interest in the mise en abyme, the story within a story. Her 2015 film My King (2015) was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, with Emmanuelle Bercot winning the Best Actress award.
Maïwenn met film director Luc Besson when she was 12 and they began dating when she was 15. In January 1993, at age 16, she gave birth to their daughter Shanna. On the DVD extras for the 1994 film Léon: The Professional, Maïwenn said the film is based on her relationship with Besson. She was 20 at the beginning of filming (early 1996) for The Fifth Element, during which Besson left her for the film's star, Milla Jovovich.
In 2004, Maïwenn had a son, Diego, with Jean-Yves Le Fur, her second ex-husband who is a real estate developer.- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Rebecca Miller was born on 15 September 1962 in Roxbury, Connecticut, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Maggie's Plan (2015), Personal Velocity (2002) and Angela (1995). She has been married to Daniel Day-Lewis since 13 November 1996. They have two children.- Director
- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
Julia Ducournau is a French film director and screenwriter. She attended film school at La Fémis in Paris, where she studied screenwriting. In 2011, her short film JUNIOR won the Petit Rail d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature, the horror movie Raw (2016), won the coveted FIPRESCI prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Sarah Polley is an actress and director renowned in her native Canada for her political activism. Blessed with an extremely expressive face that enables directors to minimize dialog due to her uncanny ability to suggest a character's thoughts, Polley has become a favorite of critics for her sensitive portraits of wounded and conflicted young women in independent films.
She was born into a show business family: her stepfather, Michael Polley, appeared with her in the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) and on the television series Avonlea (1990); and her mother, Diane Polley, was an actress and casting director. It was her mother's connections that launched Sarah, at her own insistence, on an acting career at the age of four, following in the footsteps of her older half-brother Mark Polley. A second half-brother, John Buchan, is a casting director and producer.
Her career as a child actress shifted into high gear when she was cast as the Cockney waif Jody Turner in Lantern Hill (1989), for which she won a Gemini Award, the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy, in 1992. Produced by Kevin Sullivan, the film was based on the book by Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables (1985). When Sullivan created a television series based on Montgomery's work, he cast Polley in the lead role of Sara Stanley in Avonlea (1990). The series propelled Polley into the first rank of Canadian TV stars and made her independently wealthy by the age of fourteen.
Her personal life was deeply affected by the death of her mother Diane from cancer shortly after her 11th birthday, a development that ironically paralleled the fictional life of her character Sara. Highly intelligent and politically progressive at a young age, Polley eventually rebelled against what she felt was the Americanization of the series after it was picked up by the Disney Channel for distribution in the US, eventually dropping out of the show. Though she does not blame her parents, she remains publicly disenchanted over the loss of her childhood and, in October 2003, said she is working on a script about a twelve-year-old girl on a TV show.
Polley, who picked up a second Gemini Award for her performance in the TV series Straight Up (1996), subsequently quit acting and high school to turn her attention to politics, positioning herself on the extreme left of Canada's left-of-center New Democratic Party. The publicity ensuing from her losing some teeth after being slugged by an Ontario policeman during a protest against the Conservative provincial government, plus the stinging cynicism from some other activists unimpressed by her celebrity, led her to lower her political profile temporarily and return to acting in Atom Egoyan's film The Sweet Hereafter (1997). It was her appearance as Nicole, the teenage girl injured in a school bus accident who serves as the conscience of the small town rent by the tragedy, that first brought her to the attention of critics in the US. In Canada, the role was heralded by critics as her successful breakthrough to adult roles. It was her second film with Egoyan, who wrote the part with her in mind when he adapted the novel by Russell Banks, who, ironically, is American. Predictions of an Academy Award nomination and future stardom were part of the critical consensus, and she received her first Best Actress Genie nomination from Canada's Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and the Best Supporting Actress award from the Boston Society of Film Critics. It was the buzz created at the Sundance Festival, where her starring role in the film Guinevere (1999) was showcased, when the entertainment media crowned her the it-girl of 1999.
Intensely private and extremely ambivalent about the personal cost of celebrity and the Hollywood ethos Fame is the Name of the Game, Polley could be seen as rebelling against the expectations of mainstream cinema when she embarked on a career path that took her out of the spotlight thrown by the harsh lights of the Hollywood hype/publicity machine after shooting the film Go (1999). She dropped out of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), the US$60 million mega-hyped vehicle that was supposed to make her a mainstream star in the US, choosing to return to Canada to make the CDN$1.5 million The Law of Enclosures (2000) for Genie Award-winner John Greyson, a director she admires greatly. The film grossed poorly in Canada and was not released in the US, but it did garner Polley her second Genie nomination for Best Actress. While her replacement in Almost Famous (2000) went on to win an Oscar nomination and a career above the title in glossy Hollywood films, she took a wide variety of parts, large and small, in independent films, including significant roles in the ensemble pieces The Claim (2000) and The Weight of Water (2000); bit parts in eXistenZ (1999) and Love Come Down (2000); and the lead in No Such Thing (2001). Her choice of projects showed her to be a questing spirit more focused on learning the art of her craft than on stardom.
She has said that her choice of film roles, eschewing mainstream Hollywood movies for chancier, non-commercial independent fare, was the result of an ethical decision on her part to make films with social importance. A less-observant viewer might think that the rebel Polley played in her political life that had previously manifested itself in her profession was now driving her to the verge of career suicide in terms of popularity, marketability, and choice of future roles. However, that interpretation does not recognize the extraordinary talent that will always keep her in demand by directors, if not casting agents, with an eye on the opening weekend box office. One must understand Polley's career progression in light of her attendance at the Canadian Film Centre's directors program and her production of short films, including Don't Think Twice (1999) and the highly praised I Shout Love (2001). Polley is a cinema artist. This woman wants to make, and will make films. Thus, we can understand her career choices as a desire to work with and understand the technique of some of the best directors in film, including David Cronenberg, Michael Winterbottom, and Hal Hartley.
Polley is as renowned for her intelligence as for her remarkable talent. The problem of the intelligent person in the acting field is that the actor, as artist, in not ultimately in control of their medium, and it is artistic control that is the hallmark of the great artist. The controlling intelligence on a movie set is the director, and her attendance at the Canadian Film Centre has given her a new perspective on acting. The actor, she says, should not try to give a complete performance for the camera (that is, control the representation on film) but must remember that the function of the actor is to give the director as much coverage as possible as a film, as well as a performance, is made in the editing room. According to Polley, this realization, that the film actor exists to serve the director, has given her new enthusiasm for acting. Thus, her career, and her career choices, can be seen as a quest for knowledge about the art of cinema, a journey whose fruition we will see in her future feature work as both actor and director.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Writer/Director Dee Rees is an alumna of New York University's graduate film program and a Sundance Screenwriting & Directing Lab Fellow.
In 2018, Dee became the first Black woman nominated for an Oscar in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for her highly-acclaimed film Mudbound (2017). The film, starring Jason Mitchell, Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige, tells the story of two men returning home from World War II, struggling to deal with racism and post-war life and was nominated for four Oscars, two Golden Globes, and received over 100 nominations between 2017 and 2018.
Her 1980's political thriller The Last Thing He Wanted is an adaptation of the novel by Joan Didion and will star Anne Hathaway as hardened journalist Elena McMahon.
Dee's Emmy-Award winning HBO film Bessie (2015) starred Queen Latifah as the legendary American Blues singer and was nominated for a total of twelve Emmy Awards, including Dee's individual nominations for Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing For A Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special. Bessie was also nominated for four Critics' Choice Awards and Dee was the recipient of the 2016 Director's Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Miniseries as well as the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Television Movie.
Dee's debut feature film Pariah starring Adepero Oduye and Kim Wayans premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival where it was honored with the festival's U.S. Dramatic Competition "Excellence in Cinematography" Award and was later released by Focus Features. Pariah went on to win numerous awards including the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards (2011), the Gotham Award for Best Breakthrough Director (2011), Outstanding Film- Limited Release at the GLAAD Media Awards (2012) and it received seven NAACP Image Award nominations including Outstanding Motion Picture, Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing and won the award for Outstanding Independent Motion Picture. Pariah also earned Dee a spot on New York Times' 10 Directors to Watch list in 2013.
Previously, Dee was selected as a 2008 Tribeca Institute/Renew Media Arts Fellow and appeared on Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film that same year. She is a 2011 United States Artists Fellow and her notable residencies include Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony.
Dee Rees was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee and resides in New York.- Writer
- Editor
- Script and Continuity Department
Ana Luiza Machado da Silva Muylaert (born 21 April 1964), known professionally as Anna Muylaert, is a Brazilian film and television director, producer and screenwriter. Anna studied filmmaking at the School of Communications and Arts at University of São Paulo (USP) from 1980 to 1984. She became a film critic for IstoÉ and O Estado de S. Paulo and in 1988 she joined the staff of Rede Gazeta's program TV Mix. In 1999, she worked as an editor and reporter on TV Cultura's Matéria-Prima. She also wrote scripts for the Cultura programs Mundo da Lua (1991-92) and Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum (1994-97).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Joanna Hogg was born on 20 March 1960 in London, England, UK. She is a director and writer, known for The Souvenir (2019), The Souvenir: Part II (2021) and Unrelated (2007).- Director
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Jacques Martineau was born on 8 July 1963 in Montpellier, Hérault, France. He is a director and writer, known for The Adventures of Felix (2000), Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo (2016) and Côte d'Azur (2005).- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Catherine Shortland is an Australian filmmaker from Temora, New South Wales who is known for directing the Marvel film "Black Widow." She also directed the feature-length films "Somersault", "Lore", and "Berlin Syndrome." She directed the short films "Pentuphouse", "Flowergirl", and "Joy." She is married to Tony Krawitz and they have two children.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Cheryl Dunye was born on 13 May 1966 in Liberia. She is a director and producer, known for The Watermelon Woman (1996), The Owls (2010) and Mommy Is Coming (2012).- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Marco Berger was born on 8 December 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a director and writer, known for Absent (2011), The Blonde One (2019) and Taekwondo (2016).- Sound Department
- Director
- Writer
Olivier Ducastel was born on 23 February 1962 in Lyon, Rhône, France. He is a director and writer, known for The Adventures of Felix (2000), Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo (2016) and Côte d'Azur (2005).- Director
- Actress
- Writer
Josephine Decker is known for Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014), Shirley (2020) and Madeline's Madeline (2018).- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Andrew Haigh is a writer and director. His film work includes Weekend, which premiered at SXSW and won the audience award. 45 Years, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, won 2 Silver Bears, and received an Academy Award nomination for lead actress Charlotte Rampling. Lean on Pete premiered in competition at Venice and won the Marcello Mastroianni award for actor Charlie Plummer. His most recent film, All of Us Strangers, has been nominated for 6 BAFTAs. His television work includes Looking for HBO and The North Water, a limited series for BBC.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Teresa Villaverde was born on 18 May 1966 in Lisbon, Portugal. She is a director and writer, known for Colo (2017), Two Brothers, My Sister (1994) and Transe (2006).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Todd Haynes was always interested in art, and made amateur movies and painted while he was still a child. He attended Brown university and majored in art and semiotics. After he graduated he moved to New York City and made the controversial short film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987). The movie uses dolls instead of actors to tell the the story of the late Karen Carpenter. The movie was a success at several film festivals, and because of a lawsuit by Richard Carpenter (over musical rights) is very hard to see but it is a true classic for bootleg video buyers. His first feature, Poison (1991) was even more controversial. The film was attacked by conservatives and Christians who said it was pornographic, but it won the Grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It is now considered a seminal work of the new queer cinema. His short film Dottie Gets Spanked (1993) was aired on PBS. His next feature film Safe (1995) told the story of a woman played by his good friend, Julianne Moore, suffering from a breakdown caused by a mysterious illness. Many thought the film was a metaphor of the Aids virus. The movie was considered to be an outstanding work and one of the best films of the year. In Velvet Goldmine (1998), starring Christian Bale and Ewan McGregor, he combines the visual style of 60s/70s art films and his love for glam rock music to tell the story of a fictional rock star's rise and fall. Far from Heaven (2002), set in the 1950s and starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, is about a Connecticut housewife who discovers that her husband is gay, and has an affair with her black gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert. The film was a critical and box office success, garnering four Academy Awards. It was hailed as a breakthrough for independent film, and brought Haynes mainstream recognition. With I'm Not There (2007), Haynes returned to the theme of musical legend bio, portraying Bob Dylan via seven fictive characters played by six different actors. The film brought him critical claim, with special attention to the casting of Cate Blanchett as arguably the most convincing of the Dylan characters, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. In 2011, Haynes directed Mildred Pierce, a five-hour miniseries for HBO starring Kate Winslet in the title role. His new feature film Carol (2015) with Cate Blanchett premiered at the Cannes International Festival 2015 to rave reviews and won Best Actress for Rooney Mara.- Director
- Writer
- Actress
Pascale Ferran was born on 17 April 1960 in Paris, France. She is a director and writer, known for Lady Chatterley (2006), The Age of Potential (1995) and Bird People (2014).- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Born in his ancestral palazzo, situated in the same Milanese square as both the opera house La Scala and the Milan Cathedral, Luchino Visconti (1906 - 1976) was raised under the auspices of aristocratic privilege, theater and Catholicism. This triangulation of monuments would create an equally titanic filmmaker whose work remained stylistically sui generis through arguably the most impressive decades of 20th century filmmaking. The quietude of La Terra Trema (1948) is managed with an operatic virtuosity, and the baroque period pieces-for which he is best known today-clearly point to a noble upbringing. However, there is also a Gothic character to Visconti-embodied in the spired cathedral that overshadowed his childhood-that has remained largely unsung. The relationship between the Visconti family and Gothic architecture stretches back to the Medieval Era. In 1386, Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti envisioned a cathedral in the heart of Milan, though it was fated to remain under construction for almost half a millennium until Napoleon ordered its completion in the 19th century. Just as his ancestor brought Northern Gothic architecture to Italy, so, in 1943, did Luchino introduce the groundbreaking cinematic genre of Italian neorealism to the peninsula. Doing away with sets, neorealist cinema was set in the raw environment of postwar Italy. In one sense anti-architectural in its desire to transcend the bonds of interior space, this same ambition is what makes the style a perfect cinematic analog to the Gothic. The Gothic is an architecture of exteriority: Throwing ceilings to the sky and opening walls onto the outside with large windows, the Gothic presents light as the manifestation of divinity within a place of worship. The mysticism of light, dating back to the pseudo-Dionysian theology of Abbot Suger of St. Denis Cathedral, translates well to the medium of light that is the cinema. In any Visconti work, lighting is intimately connected to set design: It is often seen in the gleam of curtains, the radiance of starlight or the glow of Milanese fog, where the director carries the religiosity of Gothic architecture into his realism. Visconti's religion (or should we say religions? For he was also a Marxist) adds an ethical weight, powerful and challenging, to his works. The term decadence, often associated with Visconti, only attains meaning through being in excess of contemporary mores. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian communists could accept Visconti's homosexuality, and a resultant displaced angst is plainly worn by his protagonists-monumental individuals who bear the full weight of their social milieus. While neorealism has come to be packaged with its own mythology-a new cinema for a liberated nation, the idea of a new "Italian" style-re-centering our historical gaze on the Gothic Visconti allows one's imagination to spread across a much larger plane of geography and time. From his cinematic apprenticeship with Jean Renoir in France-the very cradle of Gothic architecture-to his German trilogy, Visconti's style has always been one of cosmopolitan effort. This international flavor also matches the deeper etymological referent of the Gothic-the Goths, those barbarian invaders who toppled the Roman Empire. Among Visconti's formal signatures are many borrowings from foreign directors, including the particularly pronounced influence of Jean Renoir, Josef Von Sternberg and Elia Kazan. Global in scope, timeless in influence and architectural in spirit: This is the legacy of Luchino Visconti.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Pier Paolo Pasolini achieved fame and notoriety long before he entered the film industry. A published poet at 19, he had already written numerous novels and essays before his first screenplay in 1954. His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life of a pimp in the slums of Rome caused a sensation. He was arrested in 1962 when his contribution to the portmanteau film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963) was considered blasphemous and given a suspended sentence. It might have been expected that his next film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) (The Gospel According to St. Matthew), which presented the Biblical story in a totally realistic, stripped-down style, would cause a similar fuss but, in fact, it was rapturously acclaimed as one of the few honest portrayals of Christ on screen. Its original Italian title pointedly omitted the Saint in St. Matthew). Pasolini's film career would then alternate distinctly personal and often scandalously erotic adaptations of classic literary texts: Oedipus Rex (1967) (Oedipus Rex); The Decameron (1971); The Canterbury Tales (1972) (The Canterbury Tales); Arabian Nights (1974) (Arabian Nights), with his own more personal projects, expressing his controversial views on Marxism, atheism, fascism and homosexuality, notably Teorema (1968) (Theorem), Pigsty and the notorious Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), a relentlessly grim fusion of Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy with the 'Marquis de Sade' which was banned in Italy and many other countries for several years. Pasolini was murdered in still-mysterious circumstances shortly after completing the film.- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Claude Sautet was born on 23 February 1924 in Montrouge, Seine [now Hauts-de-Seine], France. He was a writer and director, known for A Heart in Winter (1992), Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995) and The Things of Life (1970). He was married to Graziella Sautet. He died on 22 July 2000 in Paris, France.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Steven Shainberg was born on 5 February 1963. He is a producer and director, known for Secretary (2002), Rupture (2016) and The Big Shoe.- Director
- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
Marleen Gorris was born on 9 December 1948 in Roermond, Limburg, Netherlands. She is a director and writer, known for Antonia's Line (1995), A Question of Silence (1982) and Broken Mirrors (1984).- Director
- Writer
- Editor
François Ozon was born on 15 November 1967 in Paris, France. He is a director and writer, known for In the House (2012), 8 Women (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Xavier Dolan was born on 20 March 1989 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is an actor and producer, known for I Killed My Mother (2009), Tom at the Farm (2013) and Heartbeats (2010).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Chilean director Raúl, or Raoul, Ruiz (1941-2011) was one of the most exciting and innovative filmmakers to emerge from 1960s World Cinema, providing more intellectual fun and artistic experimentation, shot for shot, than any filmmaker since Jean-Luc Godard. A guerrilla who uncompromisingly assaulted the preconceptions of film art, this frightfully prolific figure -he made over 100 films in 40 years- did not adhere to any one style of filmmaking. He worked in 35mm, 16mm and video, for theatrical release and for European TV, and on documentary and fiction features and shorts. His career began in avant-garde theatre where, between 1956 and 1962, he wrote over 100 plays. Although he never directed any of these productions, he did dabble in TV and filmmaking in the early 1960s. In 1968, with the release of his first completed feature, the Cassavetes-like Three Sad Tigers (1968), Ruiz became one of the key Chilean directors of New Latin American Cinema. A committed though critical supporter of the Marxist government of Salvador Allende, Ruiz was forced to flee his country after the fascist coup of 1973. Living in exile in Paris from that time onwards, he found a forum for his ideas in European TV and was championed by the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma, several of whom appeared in his first European successes, The Suspended Vocation (1978) and L'hypothèse du tableau volé (1978), two enigmatic Pierre Klossowski adaptations. Between 1980 and his death in 2011, Ruiz was one of the world's most productive but least known auteurs, in part through a long-term working relationship with Portuguese producer Paulo Branco. Other regular collaborators included Ruiz's wife and editor Valeria Sarmiento, composer Jorge Arriagada, cinematographers Sacha Vierny, Henri Alekan and Ricardo Aronovich, writers Gilbert Adair and Pascal Bonitzer, and actor Melvil Poupaud. Key early works from this period included the surrealistic masterpieces Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983), City of Pirates (1983) and Manuel on the Island of Wonders (1984), three of his many French-Portuguese co-productions perversely yet charmingly addressing the recurring Ruizian themes of childhood, exile, and maritime and rural folklore. In the 1990s, Ruiz embarked on larger projects with prominent actors such as John Hurt, Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and John Malkovich, alternating this sporadic mainstream art-house endeavour with his usual low-budget experimental productions and the teaching of his Poetics of Cinema (two volumes of which he published in 1995 and 2007). In the 1990s and 2000s, he also shot several films and TV series' in Chile, though usually without Chilean funding. Ruiz is beloved among cinephiles as a poet of oneiric imagery and a fabulist of labyrinthine stories-within-stories whose films slip effortlessly from reality to imagination and back again. A manipulator of wild intellectual games in which the rules are forever changing, Ruiz's techniques were as varied as film itself; a collection of bizarre angles, close-ups and deep-focus compositions, bewildering POV shots, dazzling colours, and labyrinthine narratives which weave and dodge the viewer's grasp with every shot. As original as Ruiz was, one can tell much about him by the diversity of his influences; he was clearly inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Louis Stevenson, Orson Welles, "Left Bank" New Wave directors such as Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, and baroque low-budget Hollywood B-movie directors like Edgar G. Ulmer, Ford Beebe and Reginald Le Borg. His erudition also extended to medieval theology, Renaissance theatre and quantum physics. Ruiz remains a much-admired auteur on the European continent, having won prestigious prizes at Cannes, Berlin, San Sebastián, Locarno, Rome and Rotterdam. He is little-known in his native Chile, however, despite having made the widely seen Little White Dove (1992), receiving several major arts prizes and having a National Day of Mourning dedicated to him on the day of his burial there. In the English-speaking world, only a handful of Ruiz's films have been distributed and it is on these few films that his reputation there is built: most notably, major art-house fare such as the Ophüls- and Visconti-inspired Marcel Proust's Time Regained (1999) but also Comedy of Innocence (2000), Klimt (2006) and Mysteries of Lisbon (2011) and straight-to-video thriller pastiches like Shattered Image (1998) and Blind Revenge (2009). Little of his huge oeuvre is available on DVD. The works that are, however, bear witness to Ruiz's unique genius.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Athina Rachel Tsangari was born on 2 April 1966 in Aspra Spitia, Greece. She is a producer and director, known for Attenberg (2010), Chevalier (2015) and The Slow Business of Going (2000).- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Self-taught writer-director Richard Stuart Linklater was born in Houston, Texas, to Diane Margaret (Krieger), who taught at a university, and Charles W. Linklater III. Richard was among the first and most successful talents to emerge during the American independent film renaissance of the 1990s. Typically setting each of his movies during one 24-hour period, Linklater's work explored what he dubbed "the youth rebellion continuum," focusing in fine detail on generational rites and mores with rare compassion and understanding while definitively capturing the 20-something culture of his era through a series of nuanced, illuminating ensemble pieces which introduced any number of talented young actors into the Hollywood firmament. Born in Houston, Texas, Linklater suspended his educational career at Sam Houston State University in 1982, to work on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He subsequently relocated to the state's capital of Austin, where he founded a film society and began work on his debut film, 1987's It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988). Three years later he released the sprawling Slacker (1990), an insightful, virtually plotless look at 1990s youth culture that became a favorite on the festival circuit prior to earning vast acclaim at Sundance in 1991. Upon its commercial release, the movie, made for less than $23,000, became the subject of considerable mainstream media attention, with the term "slacker" becoming a much-overused catch-all tag employed to affix a name and identity to America's disaffected youth culture.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Samira Makhmalbaf Filmmaker
Born on February 15,1980 in Tehran. At the age of eight, she played in "The Cyclist" directed by her father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf the celebrated Iranian filmmaker.
At the age of 17, she directed her first feature titled "The Apple" and She went on to become the youngest director in the world participating in the official section of the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. She was praised on different occasions by the legendary Jean-Luc Godard for her film. The Apple was invited to more than 100 international film festivals in a period of two years, while going to the screen in more than 30 countries.
In 1999, Samira made her second feature film titled "Blackboards" in Kurdistan of Iran, and for the second time was selected by the Cannes Film Festival to compete in the official section in 2000. She was granted the Special Jury Award. The Blackboards received many international awards including the "Federico Fellini Honor Award" from UNESCO and "Francois Truffaut Award" from Italy. The film was widely released across the world and more than two hundred thousand people watched the film in France alone.
Samira alongside other prominent director like Ken Loach, Shohei Imamura, Youssef Chahine, Sean Penn.... made one of the eleven episodes of the film "September 11". The film was premiered at Venice International Film Festival in 2002.
The third feature by Samira Makhmalbaf titled "At Five in the Afternoon", the first feature film shot in Afghanistan post Taliban. The film was selected for the competition section of Cannes Film Festival in 2003, receiving the Jury's Special Award for the second time. In 2004, she was selected as one of forty best directors of the world by Guardian newspaper.
Samira Makhmalbaf shot her fourth feature film in Afghanistan titled Two-Legged Horse in 2007, receiving the Grand Jury Awardof San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain.
Samira Makhmalbaf has also participated as jury member in reputable film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, Moscow, Montreal...- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Wong Kar-wai (born 17 July 1956) is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylised, emotionally resonant work, including Ah fei zing zyun (1990), Dung che sai duk (1994), Chung Hing sam lam (1994), Do lok tin si (1995), Chun gwong cha sit (1997), 2046 (2004) and My Blueberry Nights (2007), Yi dai zong shi (2013). His film Fa yeung nin wa (2000), starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, garnered widespread critical acclaim. Wong's films frequently feature protagonists who yearn for romance in the midst of a knowingly brief life and scenes that can often be described as sketchy, digressive, exhilarating, and containing vivid imagery. Wong was the first Chinese director to win the Best Director Award of Cannes Film Festival (for his work Chun gwong cha sit in 1997). Wong was the President of the Jury at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, which makes him the only Chinese person to preside over the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He was also the President of the Jury at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013. In 2006, Wong accepted the National Order of the Legion of Honour: Knight (Highest Degree) from the French Government. In 2013, Wong accepted Order of Arts and Letters: Commander (Highest Degree) by the French Minister of Culture.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
André Téchiné was born on 13 March 1943 in Valence, Tarn-et-Garonne, France. He is a writer and director, known for Wild Reeds (1994), Rendez-vous (1985) and Being 17 (2016).- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Olivier Assayas is a French film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is best know for his films Demonlover (2002), Something in the Air (2012), Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) and Personal Shopper (2016).
Assayas is the son of French director/screenwriter Raymond Assayas, alias Jacques Rémy.
His directorial debut was in the short film Copyright (1979).- Director
- Writer
- Actress
Larisa Shepitko was born on 6 January 1938 in Bakhmut, Ukrainian SSR, USSR [now Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine]. She was a director and writer, known for The Ascent (1977), Heat (1963) and You and Me (1971). She was married to Elem Klimov. She died on 2 July 1979 in near Redkino, Kalinin Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR.- Writer
- Director
- Editor
Bruno Dumont was born on 14 March 1958 in Bailleul, Nord, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. He is a writer and director, known for Li'l Quinquin (2014), The Life of Jesus (1997) and Camille Claudel 1915 (2013).- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Margarethe von Trotta was born in Berlin in 1942. In the 1960s she moved to Paris where she worked for film collectives, collaborating on scripts and co-directing short films. She also pursued an acclaimed acting career, starring in films by well known German directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Volker Schlöndorff. In 1971, von Trotta divorced her first husband Juergen Moeller (with whom she had a child) and married Schlöndorff. She co-wrote many of the scripts for his films, and in 1975 the two of them co-directed The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975). In 1977, von Trotta directed her first solo feature The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (1978). With her third film, Marianne & Juliane (1981), von Trotta's position as New German Cinema's most prominent and successful female filmmaker was fully secured.
Her films feature strong female protagonists, and are usually set against an important political background. Themes in her work include the effect of the political on the personal, and vice versa, as well as the relationships between female characters, often sisters.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
He grew up in Versailles with a family who was very influenced by pop music. When he was young, Gondry wanted to be a painter or an inventor. In the 80s he entered in an art school in Paris where he could develop his graphic skills and where he also met friends with whom he created a pop-rock band called Oui-Oui. The band released 2 albums ('Chacun tout le monde' and 'Formidable') and several singles until their separation in 1992. Gondry was the drummer of the band and also directed their video clips in which it was possible to see his strange world, influenced by the 60s and by his childhood. One of his videos was shown on MTV and when Björk saw it, she asked him to make her first solo video for 'Human Behaviour'. The partnership is famous: Gondry directed five other Björk's videos, benefiting by the huge budgets. This led to commissions for other artists around the world, including Massive Attack. He also made a lot of commercials for Gap, Smirnoff, Air France, Nike, Coca Cola, Adidas, Polaroid and Levi - the latter making him the most highly-awarded director for a one-off commercial.
Hollywood became interested in Gondry's success and he directed his first feature movie Human Nature (2001), adapting a Charlie Kaufman's scenario, which was shown in the 2001 Cannes Festival. Although it wasn't a big success, this film allowed him to direct Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he again collaborated with Charlie Kaufman. The movie became a popular independent film and he and his co-writers won an Oscar for it.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Luca Guadagnino was born on 10 August 1971 in Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He is a director and producer, known for Call Me by Your Name (2017), Suspiria (2018) and Bones and All (2022).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Julio Medem was born in San Sebastian in northern Spain. As a teenager Medem made short movies with a super-8 camera owned by his father. Some of those films are "El ciego" (1976), "El jueves pasado" (1977) and "Fideos" (1979.) Wanting to know more about the darkest corners of the human mind, Medem studied psychiatry. In 1985 Medem received a degree in medicine from the University of the Basque Country. In 1986 Medem directed "Patas en la cabeza," a 35MM short that won an award in the international Festival of Bilbao. In 1987, after winning the Telenorte prize for another short movie, "Las seis en punta", he decided to become a professional filmmaker. Medem worked as assistant, editor and screenwriter in differents projects for cinema and TV. He also wrote several screenplays, but they were all refused by most of production companies in Spain. Finally, in 1991, Medem received a call from a new production company called SOGETEL. They were interested in his script titled "Vacas," about the fight between two families during three generations, from 1875 until 1936. Medem directed the film for SOGETEL and it was released in 1992. "Vacas" was brilliantly received and became a big success. It won the Goya Award from the Spanish academy for best new director, and won prizes in the festivals of Tokyo, Torino and Alexandria. In 1993 Medem made his second movie, "La ardilla roja." "La ardilla roja" confirmed Medem's talents and won prizes in Fort Lauderdale, Bogota and Bucarest. His third movie, "Tierra," released in 1996, was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. In 1998 Medem released "Los amantes del Circulo Polar," considered his best movie by most of his fans. It also became a box-office hit with more than one million spectators in Spain. "Los amantes del Circulo Polar" was also released worldwide. In 2001 his fourth movie, "Lucia y el sexo," became a huge hit and began the career of actress Paz Vega who won the Goya for best new actress. In 2003 the release of "La pelota vasca," a documentary that portrays the phenomenon of nationalism in the Basque Country of northern Spain, was very polemical.
Julio Medem is for sure the most important and original Spanish filmmaker.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Baz Luhrmann is an Australian writer, director and producer with projects spanning film, television, opera, theater, music and recording industries. He is regarded by many as a contemporary example of an auteur for his distinctly recognizable style and deep involvement in the writing, directing, design and musical components of all his work. As a storyteller, he 's known as a pioneer of pop culture, fusing high and low culture with a unique sonic and cinematic language. He is the most commercially successful Australian director, with his films making up four of the top ten highest worldwide grossing Australian films ever.
During his studies at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, Luhrmann collaborated with other students to create ''Strictly ballroom'', a stage production drawn from his childhood experiences in the world of ballroom dancing. Luhrmann later adapted the show into his 1992 film debut, Strictly Ballroom (1992), which premiered at Cannes to a fifteen-minute standing ovation. Thus began the ''Red Curtain Trilogy'', which would include the film Romeo + Juliet (1996) as well as the Oscar-winning Moulin Rouge! (2001). The latter also took home Golden Globes for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Original Score. This first body of work was capped by Luhrmann's 2002 Broadway adaptation of the opera ''La Bohème'', recognized by two Tony Awards.
In 2004, Luhrmann collaborated once more with actress Nicole Kidman to create No. 5 The Film, a short film featuring the iconic Chanel perfume, as well as costumes designed by Karl Lagerfeld. With its success, the piece ushered in a new era of fashion advertising and became a landmark in the evolution of branded content. In 2008, Luhrmann worked with Kidman for a third time on the ambitious epic Australia (2008), the titular country's second-highest grossing film of all time. He later adapted F. Scott Fitzgerald's ''The Great Gatsby'' into a 2013 film, The Great Gatsby (2013), which went on to become the director's highest-grossing movie at over $353 million worldwide. The film was awarded with two Oscars and earned praise from Fitzgerald's granddaughter, who noted that "Scott would have been proud". The film's soundtrack pulled the Roaring 20s into the 2000s, blending early 20th century jazz with contemporary hip-hop. The album, produced by Luhrmann, Anton Monsted, and Jay-Z, hit number one on the Billboard charts and garnered several Grammy nominations.
Most recently, Luhrmann created The Get Down (2016), a 2016 Netflix series and 1970s-set mythic saga of how the South Bronx, at the brink of bankruptcy, gave birth to hip-hop, punk and disco. In the interest of cultural authenticity and historical accuracy Luhrmann collaborated with some of the era's most legendary artists, including [linl=nm0334739], Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Nas, Kurtis Blow, and Hector Xtravaganza. The show was a critical success, certified fresh by Rotten Tomatoes, and described by Variety as "a reclamation of, and a love letter to, a marginalized community of a certain era, told through the unreliable tools of romance, intuition and lived experiences."
Add further information about Elvis film release here. Needs to be in his bio.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
He is a Turkish-Italian director, screenwriter and writer. In 1976, he first went to Perugia Foreigners University in Italy, learned Italian for a year, and then transferred to Rome La Sapienza University to study cinema. After completing his education there, he went to Accademia Navona and Accademia d'Arte Dramatica schools to study art history, costume and theater direction and took lessons from Silvio D'Amico. During this period, he worked with Julien Beck in various positions on the European tour of The Living Teather. In 1982, he was assistant director to Massimo Troisi in the film Scusate il Ritardo, and later to Maurizio Ponzi in the film Son Contento. Ferzan Özpetek worked as an assistant director for nearly 15 years with different directors such as Ricky Tognazzi, Lamberto Bava, Francesco Nuti, Sergio Citti, Giovanni Veronesi and Marco Risi.
American singer Madonna stated that Ferzan Özpetek was "a genius" in an interview with a television program. Özpetek received congratulations from names such as John Travolta and Andy Garcia after the screening of his 2009 film, Serseri Mayinlar, at the opening of the Los Angeles Film Festival.
Ferzan Özpetek served as the jury president of the committee consisting of actors Hülya Kocyigit, Zuhal Olcay, Aytac Arman, Kenan Isik and director Nuri Bilge Ceylan at the 42nd Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival held in 2005.
In 2007, he was a jury member at the 75th Venice Film Festival.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Belonging to an important family clan in Wisconsin, Joseph Losey studied philosophy but was always interested in theater and thus worked together with Bertolt Brecht. After directing some shorts for MGM, he made his first important film, The Boy with Green Hair (1948), for RKO. While he was filming The Prowler (1951) in Italy he was summoned to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the congressional committee charged with "rooting out" Communist "subversion" in the motion picture industry. Unwilling to subject himself to the committee's well-known intimidation tactics, Losey decided to seek exile in Great Britain. In the following years he used a pseudonym--"Joseph Walton"--for his films, which were of minor quality. He regained his prestige with the thrillers Chance Meeting (1959), The Concrete Jungle (1960) and Eva (1962). From that point on his films varied between top-quality work like Accident (1967) and much lower-quality projects such as Modesty Blaise (1966), which was a box-office success, and Galileo (1975), which wasn't.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
John Cassavetes was a Greek-American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He is considered a pioneer of American independent film, as he often financed his own films.
Cassavetes was born in New York City in 1929 to Nicholas John Cassavetes (1893-1979) and his wife, Katherine Demetre (1906-1983). Nicholas was an immigrant from Greece, while Katherine was Greek-American who had been born in New York City. The Cassavetes family moved back to Greece in the early 1930s, and John learned Greek as his primary language. The family moved back to the United States around 1936, possibly to evade Greece's new dictatorship, the 4th of August Regime (1936-1941). Young John had to learn to speak English. He spent his late childhood and most of his teenage years in Long Island, New York. From 1945-47, he attended the Port Washington High School. He wrote for the school newspaper and the school yearbook. The 18-year-old Cassavetes was then transferred to the Blair Academy, a boarding school located in Blairstown, New Jersey. When the time came for him to start college, Cassavetes enrolled at Champlain College (in Burlington, Vermont) but was expelled owing to poor grades.
After a brief vacation to Florida, Cassavetes enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA), in New York City. Several of his old friends were already students there and had recommended it to Cassavetes, who would be mentored by Don Richardson (1918-1996). After graduating, he began to regularly perform on stage while also appearing in small roles in films and television shows.
Cassavetes's first notable film role was that of Robert Batsford, one of the three villains (along with Vince Edwards and David Cross) in The Night Holds Terror (1955). His next major role was juvenile delinquent Frankie Dane in the crime film "Crime in the Streets" (1956). He won a lead role in Edge of the City (1957) as drifter Axel Nordmann. His co-star for the film was Sidney Poitier, who played stevedore Tommy Tyler. The film helped break new ground, portraying a working-class interracial friendship. Cassavetes gained critical acclaim for his role, and film critics compared him to Marlon Brando. Cassavetes's success as an actor led to his becoming a contract player for MGM. In 1959, he directed his first film, Shadows (1958). It depicted the lives of three African-American siblings in New York City. It won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival.
His next directing effort, Too Late Blues (1961), was about the professional and romantic problems of a struggling jazz musician. The film was poorly received at the time, though its autobiographical elements are considered remarkable. Cassavetes then directed A Child Is Waiting (1963), which depicted life in a state institution for mentally handicapped and emotionally disturbed children. The film was a documentary-style portrayal of problems in the social services. It was praised by critics but failed at the box office.
In 1968, Cassavetes had a comeback as a director with Faces (1968), which depicts a single night in the life of a middle-aged married couple. After 14 years of marriage, the two feel rather miserable and seek happiness in the company of friends and the beds of younger lovers, but neither manages to cure their sense of misery. The film gained critical acclaim, and, in 2011, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Cassavetes returned to the theme of a midlife crisis in his next film, Husbands (1970). The film depicts three middle-aged men, professionally successful and seemingly happily married. The death of a close childhood friend reminds them of their own mortality, and of their fading memories of youth. They flee their ordinary lives with a shared vacation to London, but their attempts to rejuvenate themselves fail. This film attracted mixed reviews, with some critics praising its "moments of piercing honesty" and others finding fault with its rambling dialogue.
Cassavetes's next film was Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), about the romantic relationship between a seemingly incompatible couple, jaded museum curator Minnie Moore and the temperamental drifter Seymour Moskowitz. It was well received and garnered Cassavetes a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. His next film was A Woman Under the Influence (1974), concerning the effects of mental illness on a working-class family. In the film, ordinary housewife Mabel Longhetti starts displaying signs of a mental disorder. She undergoes psychiatric treatment for six months while her husband, Nick Longhetti, attempts to play the role of a single father. But Nick seems to be a social misfit in his own right, and neither parent seems to be "normal". Cassavetes was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for this film, but the award was won by Francis Ford Coppola.
Cassavetes next directed the gritty crime film, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). In the film, Korean War veteran and cabaret owner Cosmo Vittelli owes a large debt to a criminal organization and is coerced to serve as their hit-man in an assassination scheme. He has been told that the target is an insignificant bookie, but after the assassination Vittelli learns that he just killed a high-ranking crime boss of the Chinese mafia and that he himself is now a target for assassination. The film gained good reviews and a cult following.
His next film, Opening Night (1977), was more enigmatic, mixing drama with horror elements. Protagonist Myrtle Gordon (played by Cassavetes's wife, Gena Rowlands) is a famous actress, but aging and dissatisfied with the only theatrical role available to her. After seeing teenager Nancy Stein, one of her obsessive fans , get killed in a car accident, Myrtle starts having visions of Nancy's ghost. As she keeps fighting the ghost, drinking heavily and chain-smoking, the film ends without explaining what seems to be going wrong with Myrtle's perception of reality. The film was a hit in Europe but flopped in the United States.
Cassavetes had another directing comeback with "Gloria" (1980). In the film, Gloria Swenson (formerly a gangster's girlfriend) is asked to protect Phil Dawn, the young son of an FBI informant within a New York crime family. After the apparent assassination of Phil's parents, Gloria finds herself targeted by gangsters and wanted by the police as a kidnapping suspect. The film won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, and protagonist Gena Rowlands was nominated for several acting awards.
Cassavetes's 11th directing effort was the rather unconventional drama Love Streams (1984), about the relationship between two middle-aged siblings. In the film, Sarah Lawson suffers from depression following a messy divorce and moves in with her brother, Robert Harmon, an alcoholic writer with self-destructive tendencies. Though estranged from his ex-wife and his only son and unable to protect himself from violent foes, in the end Robert finally has someone for whom to care. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Cassavetes' swan song as a director was the comedy Big Trouble (1986), replacing the much younger Andrew Bergman. The film concerns an insurance agent who needs $40,000 for college tuition for his three daughters. He agrees to cooperate in an insurance scam with the wife of one of his clients, though the plan may require them to murder her husband. Several elements of the film were recycled from the plot of the iconic film noir Double Indemnity (1944), and "Big Trouble" served as its unofficial remake. The film was unsuccessful, and Cassavetes himself reportedly disliked the script.
In the late 1980s, Cassavetes suffered from health problems and his career was in decline. He died in 1989 from cirrhosis of the liver caused by many years of heavy drinking. He was only 59 years old. He is buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, having left more than 40 unproduced screenplays and an unpublished novel. His son, Nick Cassavetes, eventually used one of the unproduced screenplays to direct a new film, the romantic drama, She's So Lovely (1997). It was released eight years after the death of John Cassavetes, and was well received by critics.- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
- Cinematographer
When he made his directorial debut in 1970, Nicolas Roeg was already a 23-year veteran of the British film industry, starting out in 1947 as an editing apprentice and working his way up to cinematographer twelve years later. He first came to attention as part of the second unit on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), with Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death (1964) two years later containing his first really distinctive solo work. He went on to photograph films for such distinguished directors as François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451 (1966)), John Schlesinger (Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)) and Richard Lester (Petulia (1968)) before his sensational directorial debut in 1968. Co-directed with writer (and painter) Donald Cammell, Performance (1970) was intended to be a simple-minded star vehicle for Mick Jagger and Warner Bros were so horrified when they saw the final multi-layered kaleidoscope of sex, violence, and questions of identity that they delayed its release for two years. Roeg went to Australia for his solo debut as director (Walkabout (1971)), which was also his last film as cinematographer, and throughout the next decade he produced a world-class body of work (Don't Look Now (1973); The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976); Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)) that revealed his uniquely off-kilter view of the world, expressed through fragmented, dislocated images and a highly original yet strangely accessible approach to narrative. He married the star of Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980), the elegant Theresa Russell who would play the female lead in nearly all his subsequent films, though these have generally found less favor with critics and audiences, and the release of both Eureka (1983) and Cold Heaven (1991) was severely restricted due to problems with the films' distributors.- Director
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Liliana Cavani was born on 12 January 1933 in Carpi, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. She is a director and writer, known for L'ospite (1971), Dove siete? Io sono qui (1993) and The Night Porter (1974).- Director
- Producer
- Additional Crew
He, along with the other members of the "Compass Players" including Elaine May, Paul Sills, Byrne Piven, Joyce Hiller Piven and Edward Asner helped start the famed "Second City Improv" company. They used the games taught to them by fellow cast mate, Paul Sills 's mother, Viola Spolin. He later worked in legitimate theater as an actor before entering into a very successful comedy duo with Elaine May. The two were known as "the world's fastest humans".- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Alain Tanner was born on 6 December 1929 in Geneva, Switzerland. He was a director and writer, known for Charles, Dead or Alive (1969), In the White City (1983) and Return from Africa (1973). He was married to Janine Giudici. He died on 11 September 2022 in Geneva, Canton de Genève, Switzerland.- Writer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Erick Zonca was born on 10 September 1956 in Orléans, Loiret, France. He is a writer and director, known for The Dreamlife of Angels (1998), Julia (2008) and Black Tide (2018).- Writer
- Director
- Composer
Is the son of a Spanish mother and a Chilean father. His family moved back to Spain when he was 1 year old, and he grew up and studied in Madrid. He wrote, produced and directed his first short film La cabeza at the age of 19, and he was 23 when he directed his feature debut Thesis (1996). His film Open Your Eyes (1997) was a huge success in Spain and was distributed worldwide. It was remade in Hollywood by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky (2001), starring Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz (also the star of the original version) and Cameron Diaz. The Others (2001) is Amenábar's first English language film.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Hal Hartley is an American filmmaker, writer, director, producer, and composer who has made twelve feature films since 1988. Popularly associated with the American independent filmmaking scene of the early nineties, he went on to write and direct such films as No Such Thing (2001) for United Artists and Fay Grim (2006) for HD Net Films. Hartley has won numerous awards at Cannes and Sundance, and has had his work shown in retrospectives around the world. He has also written and staged theatre, most notably his play Soon (1998) and the world premiere of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen's opera La Commedia (2008). He maintains his own production company, Possible Films, in New York City.
Hartley established himself as a noted and prolific filmmaker in the first decade of his career, making many films very quickly: The Unbelievable Truth (Nominated, 1990 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize), Trust (Winner, Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival), Surviving Desire (1991), Simple Men (Official Selection, 1992 Cannes Film Festival), Amateur (Official Selection, 1994 Cannes Director's Fortnight; Winner, 1994 Tokyo International Film Festival Young Filmmakers Award), Flirt (1995), and Henry Fool (Winner, 1998 Cannes Film Festival Best Screenplay).
In 1998 Hartley shot his first digital video feature, an eschatological comedy called The Book of Life. He continued with a monster movie, No Such Thing (Official Selection, 2001 Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard), and a futuristic dystopia, The Girl from Monday (Winner, 2005 Sitges International Film Festival "Premi Noves Visions" Award). In 2004 he moved to Berlin, where he made Henry Fool's sequel, Fay Grim (Official Selection, 2006 Toronto International Film Festival; Winner, 2006 RiverRun International Film Festival Audience Choice Award). The distribution for his most recent release, Meanwhile (2012), was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Hartley has made dozens of short films, many of which are available in anthology form as Possible Films: Short Works by Hal Hartley 1994-2004 (2004) and PF2 (2010). There have been retrospectives of his work in the Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Korea, Argentina, and Poland. He is an alumnus of the American Academy in Berlin. He was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the Republic of France in 1996, and taught filmmaking at Harvard University from 2001 to 2004.
Hartley was born on November 3, 1959 to Eileen (nee Flynn) and Harold Hartley. He grew up in Lindenhurst, Long Island, in a working class suburb an hour from New York City with two older brothers and a younger sister. He graduated from Lindenhurst High School in 1977 and enrolled at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he took a formative elective in Super 8 filmmaking. He returned home after the 1977-1978 academic year to earn more money for schooling, eventually matriculating at the State University of New York at Purchase Film School in September 1980. He graduated in May 1984, and after a year of various production assistant jobs, settled into a position at a commercial production company where his boss helped finance his first feature, The Unbelievable Truth (1989).- Director
- Cinematographer
- Editor
After school, Jarman studied history and art history at King's College. In 1963 he began studying art in Pop Art London. In the general mood of optimism from the mid-1960s onward, he began to openly confront his homosexuality. Jarman took over the set design for Ken Russell on the films "The Devils" (1971) and "Savage Messiah" (1972). Then he began making experimental films himself - initially in Super 8 format. Jarman presented his first feature film in 1976 with "Sebastiane", an openly homosexual film adaptation of the life of the early Christian martyr Sebastian - in Latin! This was followed by "Jubilee" (1978), a sarcastic allusion to the crown jubilee of Elizabeth II the year before.
Jarman then turned to Shakespeare, which he filmed in the punk revue "The Tempest" (1979) and in the erotic-themed work "The Angelic Conversation" (1985). With "Caravaggio" (1986), Jarman approached the passions depicted in the Renaissance painter's paintings and which the director re-staged. At the end of 1986, Jarman learned of his HIV infection. The films "The Last of England" (1987) and "War Requiem" (1989) were made under the sign of the AIDS threat and the Falklands War, which deal with the themes of death and destruction. His films about the ambivalent historical figures of "Edward II" also deal with homosexual dramas. (1991) and "Wittgenstein" (1992). When Jarman slowly went blind, he made "Blue" in 1993, a film that only shows a blue screen and otherwise lives from its texts and sounds from the "off".- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Michael took an English degree at Oxford then trained in film at Bristol and London breaking into television via the cutting room at Thames Television. He made his directorial debut with two documentaries on Ingmar Bergman His production of Love Lies Bleeding won the Silver Award at the 1993 New York Television Festival and the 4 part serial 'Family' has collected numerous awards at film and television festivals around the world. He also directed the opening story in the first series of the multi award winning Cracker- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Álex de la Iglesia is one of the most popular and respected European filmmakers of his generation. Considered a genre of his own, based on his skill and originality in a range of cinematographic art styles, he has currently finished shooting the second season of "30 Coins", the successful HBO Max series. 2022 saw the release of two feature films directed by de la Iglesia: the slasher "Veneciafrenia" (part of The Fear Collection) and the romantic road movie "Four's a Crowd", alongside "Venus" by Jaume Balagueró, which was produced by Álex de la Iglesia, in association with Sony Pictures and Amazon Prime Video.
Born in Bilbao, Álex de la Iglesia started out in the world of comics and he has never lost this side to him throughout his career in film. He began as a director in "Mutant Action" and "The Day of the Beast", movies that changed the face of Spanish fantastique genre forever. Among his most renowned works are "The Last Circus" - praised by The New York Times the same day it was released in the US -"Ferpect Crime", "Witching and Bitching", "My Big Night" and "The Bar".
With Pokeepsie Films, the production company De la Iglesia created with his wife, prestigious producer Carolina Bang, he has contributed as a producer to nurturing a new generation of filmmakers, such as Paul Urkijo, Eduardo Casanova, Zoe Berriatúa, Juanfer Andrés and Esteban Roel.
With Bang and De La Iglesia as producers, Pokeepsie Films had great success with movies such as "70 Big Ones" by Koldo Serra and "Perfect Strangers" and "Veneciafrenia", both directed by Álex de la Iglesia himself. "Four's a crowd" is his latest release as a feature director, while as a producer he has also been part of "La Pietà", by Eduardo Casanova, and the aforementioned "Venus", directed by Jaume Balagueró.
In 2023, Pokeepsie Films has released the HBO Max series, "Headless chickens", starring Hugo Silva, the Prime Video original feature film "My fault" (the most watched non-English language movie in the history of the platform), and has started shooting "1992", a Netflix series directed by Álex de la Iglesia.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Jessica Hausner was born on 6 October 1972 in Vienna, Austria. She is a director and writer, known for Little Joe (2019), Lourdes (2009) and Amour Fou (2014).- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Diane Kurys was born on 3 December 1948 in Lyon, Rhône, France. She is an actress and director, known for For a Woman (2013), Entre Nous (1983) and Peppermint Soda (1977).- Director
- Writer
- Cinematographer
Pedro Costa was born on 30 December 1958 in Lisbon, Portugal. He is a director and writer, known for Horse Money (2014), Vitalina Varela (2019) and Colossal Youth (2006).