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Ondi Timoner is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker who has the rare distinction of winning the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at Sundance twice: for DIG! (2004), a film about the collision of art and commerce through the love/hate relationship between the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols, and for WE LIVE IN PUBLIC, a film about a social experiment which proves the loss of intimacy and privacy with the advent of the Internet (2009). Both films were acquired by New York's MoMA for its permanent collection.
Since then, Ondi has created award-winning films and series such as JOIN US, about mind control; COOL IT about solutions to climate change; BRAND: A Second Coming, about the transformation of comedian disruptor Russell Brand; the 10-hour series JUNGLETOWN, about "the world's most sustainable modern town in remote Panama; COMING CLEAN, about solutions to the opioid crisis; and the dramatic feature MAPPLETHORPE starring Matt Smith, which she also wrote, produced, and edited.
Her most personal film, LAST FLIGHT HOME, about her father Eli Timoner's extraordinary life and intentional death, premiered at Sundance & Telluride in 2022, winning Best Documentary at Woodstock and Dallas Int'l FF, and the Critics Award at Key West FF before making the Shortlist for the 95th Academy Awards. Ondi was recently awarded the prestigious Visionary Award for Documentary Excellence at DOC NYC and the Impact Award at Hamptons DocFest.
Her newest film THE NEW AMERICANS takes audiences into the intersection of finance, media, and extremism, uncovering the connection between the January 6th Insurrection and the Gamestop Squeeze to explore the explosive ramifications of our digital future and premiered at SXSW in 2023. Ondi is an active member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, Directors Guild of America, Producers Guild of America, Writers Guild of America, International Documentary Association, Film Independent, Women in Film, and Film Fatales.- Director
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- Actor
Bruce McDonald was born on 28 May 1959 in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He is a director and producer, known for Pontypool (2008), Dance Me Outside (1994) and Highway 61 (1991).- Actor
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Dan Zukovic was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He is known for Scammerhead (2014), The Last Big Thing (1996) and Dark Arc (2004).- Director
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Denis Villeneuve is a French Canadian film director and writer. He was born in 1967, in Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada. He started his career as a filmmaker at the National Film Board of Canada. He is best known for his feature films Arrival (2016), Sicario (2015), Prisoners (2013), Enemy (2013), and Incendies (2010). He is married to Tanya Lapointe.- Writer
- Producer
Kazuo Ishiguro was born on 8 November 1954 in Nagasaki, Japan. He is a writer and producer, known for Living (2022), Never Let Me Go (2010) and The Remains of the Day (1993). He has been married to Lorna Anne MacDougall since 1986. They have one child.- Director
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Ry Russo-Young is a bold and innovative writer/director working across genres in both dark and lighter tones. Her work is consistently visually arresting and emotionally potent. Ry's early independent films were associated with the mumblecore genre in part due to her performance alongside Greta Gerwig in the mumblecore classic Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007). As a filmmaker, she directed Nobody Walks (2012), co-written with Lena Dunham and starring Olivia Thirlby, Rosemary DeWitt and John Krasinski, which won a special Jury Prize at Sundance and was released theatrically by Magnolia Pictures. She then went on to direct the wide-release features Before I Fall (2017) and The Sun Is Also a Star (2019) as well as television and commercial projects, including Apple's Shrinking (2023), HBO's And Just Like That (2023), Amazon's Panic (2021) and Marvel's Cloak & Dagger (2018).
Her HBO documentary series, Nuclear Family (2021), is based on the true story of her sperm donor suing her lesbian mothers for visitation and paternity rights when Ry was nine years old. The series received much critical acclaim with nominations for a Peabody Award, Independent Spirit Award, GLAAD Award and is currently being developed as a fiction series.
Ry's work has premiered and won awards at numerous international film festivals including Telluride, Sundance, SXSW, Stockholm, Torino, Thessaloniki and TriBeCa. She has received accolades from the New York State Council on the Arts, TriBeCa Film Institute, the LEF Foundation, the Sundance Institute and Creative Capital. She majored in film at Oberlin College and grew up in New York City. Her work has been praised by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Variety, Vanity Fair and The New York Times, among others.- Actor
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Nick Cassavetes was born in New York City, the son of actress Gena Rowlands and Greek-American actor and film director John Cassavetes. As a child, he appeared in two of his father's films: Husbands (1970) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974). After spending so much of his youth surrounded by the film industry, Cassavetes initially decided he did not want to go into the field. He instead attended Syracuse University on a basketball scholarship. His athletic career was effectively ended by an injury, and he decided to rethink his aspirations, ultimately deciding to attend his parents' alma mater, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He has appeared in the films, Face/Off (1997), The Wraith (1986), Life (1999), Class of 1999 II: The Substitute (1994), Backstreet Dreams (1990) and The Astronaut's Wife (1999), among others. He has directed several films, including John Q (2002), Alpha Dog (2006), She's So Lovely (1997), Unhook the Stars (1996), The Notebook (2004), and My Sister's Keeper (2009). He also adapted the screenplay for Blow (2001) and wrote the dialogue for the Justin Timberlake music video, "What Goes Around... Comes Around". In 1985, Cassavetes married Isabelle Rafalovich. They had two daughters together, Virginia Cassavetes (Virginia Sara Cassavetes) (born in 1986) and Sasha Cassavetes (born in 1988), before divorcing. He then married Heather Wahlquist (Heather "Queenie" Wahlquist), who has appeared in several of his films, including a small role in The Notebook (2004) as Sara, a secondary character and best friend to the female lead Allie Hamilton, portrayed by Rachel McAdams. The movie is effectively a family project, as Cassavetes's own mother, Gena Rowlands, appears as the older, married Allie Calhoun.- Special Effects
Esteban Diacono is known for SubHysteria (2010).- Director
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- Music Department
Julian Schnabel was born on 26 October 1951 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Before Night Falls (2000), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) and At Eternity's Gate (2018). He was previously married to Olatz López Garmendia and Jacqueline Schnabel.- Director
- Producer
- Cinematographer
Matthew Heineman is an Academy Award-nominated, nine-time Emmy Award-winning, and two-time DGA Award-winning filmmaker. The Sundance Film Festival called Heineman "one of the most talented and exciting documentary filmmakers working today," while Anne Thompson of IndieWire wrote that Heineman is a "respected and gifted filmmaker who combines gonzo fearlessness with empathetic sensitivity."
In 2019, he received a nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First Time Feature Film Director from the Directors Guild of America for his narrative debut, A Private War - making Heineman and Martin Scorsese the only filmmakers ever nominated for both narrative and documentary DGA Awards. A Private War stars Jamie Dornan, Tom Hollander, Stanley Tucci, and Oscar-nominee Rosamund Pike as legendary war reporter Marie Colvin. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to widespread critical acclaim before being released nationwide by Aviron Pictures. It was a New York Times Critics' Pick, and Variety hailed the film as "Heineman's astonishing narrative debut" and "an incredibly sophisticated, psychologically immersive film." A Private War also earned two Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress and Best Original Song.
His latest film, American Symphony, is a portrait of Academy Award and Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste. While composing an original symphony for Carnegie Hall, Batiste receives 11 Grammy nominations and is at a career high. But this trajectory is upended when his life partner -- best-selling author Suleika Jaouad -- learns that her long dormant cancer has returned in this film about two artists at a crossroads. It premiered at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival where it was lauded by both audiences and critics, and was subsequently acquired by Netflix and Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground. Clayton Davis of Variety hailed the film as "quite possibly one of the best love stories seen on film in over two decades" while Daniel Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "a celebration of art, resilience and the mutability of the human spirit." American Symphony was shortlisted for an Academy Award, won the PGA Award for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Motion Pictures, and has received over 40 nominations including the BAFTA Film Award, Critics Choice Award, and NAACP Image Award. The film is available to stream on Netflix.
Heineman previously directed and produced Retrograde, which offers a cinematic and historic window onto the end of America's twenty-year war in Afghanistan and the costs endured for those most intimately involved from rarely seen operational control rooms to the frontlines of battle to the chaotic Kabul airport during the final U.S. withdrawal. The feature documentary from National Geographic Films premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in 2022, where it received wide-spread critical acclaim. Retrograde was shortlisted for an Academy Award, nominated for a DGA and PGA Award, and was nominated for six Emmy awards, winning for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary, Outstanding Cinematography, and Outstanding Editing. It also received a Producing Award from DOC NYC, and was honored with the Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Documentary. The Wrap commended the film as "a triumph of access and unbelievable bravery," while Salon called it "chilling" extolling that "Heineman has become famous for his cinema verité approach that avoids both interviews and voiceovers, but this film takes that signature style to an entirely new level of art." The Times proclaimed it "hair-raising" and that Heineman "creates some of the most beautiful images in documentary film-making today." Following the November 2022 theatrical release, Retrograde premiered on National Geographic Channel on December 8th, 2022 and is now available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.
Prior to Retrograde, Heineman directed, produced, shot, and edited The First Wave, a feature documentary film with exclusive access inside one of New York City's hardest-hit hospital systems during the harrowing first four months of the Covid-19 pandemic. The First Wave received the International Documentary Association's prestigious Pare Lorentz Award, was shortlisted for an Academy Award, and was nominated for seven Emmy awards, winning Best Documentary, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing. The film was a New York Times Critics' Pick hailed by The Hollywood Reporter as a "masterfully crafted film" and Variety as "a courageous and astonishing cinematic time capsule." Released by National Geographic Documentary Films and NEON, the film is available on Hulu.
Previously, Heineman directed Amazon's The Boy From Medellin, an astonishingly intimate portrait of international superstar J Balvin that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before being released by Amazon Studios. Additionally, Heineman co-directed with Matthew Hamachek the Emmy winning two-part documentary Tiger, which he also executive produced. The documentary, which was released by HBO in two parts in January 2021, offers a revealing look at the rise, fall, and epic comeback of global icon Tiger Woods.
Heineman directed and executive produced The Trade, a Showtime docu-series that chronicles a different topic each season, from the opioid crisis to human trafficking, through the eyes of those most affected. It was described by The Hollywood Reporter as "a thriller... like Traffic only current and real", while the New York Times said, "Heineman has shown an uncanny ability to gain access to hard-to-reach people and places." Both seasons of the show premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and received overwhelming critical acclaim and awards recognition. It won Best Episodic Series at the 2018 IDA Awards for season one, as well as two News & Documentary Emmy Awards for season two, including Outstanding Direction for Heineman.
His documentary film City of Ghosts, which follows a group of citizen-journalists exposing the horrors of ISIS, premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was distributed worldwide by Amazon Studios before having its broadcast premiere on A&E. Heineman won his second Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary Award from the DGA for the film- one of only three directors to win the prestigious honor twice. City of Ghosts also won the Courage Under Fire Award from the International Documentary Association "in recognition of conspicuous bravery in the pursuit of the truth" and was listed on over 20 critics year-end lists for Best Documentary of 2017. The film was also nominated for a BAFTA Award, PGA Award, IDA Award, and Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.
Cartel Land, which explores vigilantes taking on the Mexican drug cartels, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and won three Primetime Emmy Awards, including Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking and Best Cinematography. The film premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where Heineman won the Best Director Award and Special Jury Prize for Cinematography. Cartel Land was also awarded the Courage Under Fire Award, the DGA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Documentary, and the George Polk Award in Journalism. The film was released theatrically nationwide by The Orchard and had its broadcast premiere on A&E.
He previously co-directed and produced the feature-length, Emmy-nominated documentary Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescure American Healthcare; collaborated for two years on the Emmy-nominated HBO series, The Alzheimer's Project; and also directed and produced Our Time, his first documentary about what it's like to be young in America.
Heineman founded Our Time Projects, a New York based production company that produced some of Heineman's gripping and unprecedented films such as City of Ghosts and Retrograde, in 2009. Heineman, a 2005 graduate of Dartmouth College, is based in New York City.- Writer
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One of Québec's most politically aware filmmakers, Denys Arcand studied history at Université de Montréal, where he co-directed Seul ou avec d'autres (1962) with Denis Héroux and co-written with Stéphane Venne. He joined the National Film Board (NFB) in 1963, where his feature-length documentary on the textile industry, On est au coton (1970), was so controversial it was suppressed for 6 years. He made another fine documentary, Québec: Duplessis et après... (1972), before leaving the NFB for the private sector. La maudite galette (1972), Réjeanne Padovani (1973) and Gina (1975) were distinctive views of Québec society, original and provocative. All 3 used the gangster film as a source while distorting many of its conventions. He then moved to TV, scripting the Duplessis (1978) series for Radio-Canada and directing 3 episodes of Empire, Inc. (1983). He returned to the NFB to make a documentary on the 1980 referendum, Le confort et l'indifférence (1982), which revealed growing cynicism about the political process. It won the Québec Critics Prize.
He returned to commercial filmmaking after a hiatus of 10 years with The Crime of Ovide Plouffe (1984), before achieving major success with the scathing comedy about sexual mores, The Decline of the American Empire (1986) (The Decline of the American Empire), a film that won numerous prizes, including the prestigious Critic's Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The New York Film Critics voted it Best Foreign Film in 1986 and it won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the 1987 Genies. It was also nominated as Best Foreign Film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. Jesus of Montreal (1989) confirmed Arcand's international reputation, winning the Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It won 10 Genies, including Best Picture and Director, and was nominated in the Best Foreign Film category by the Academy. Arcand then moved into English-language production in an attempt to break into a larger international market. Love and Human Remains (1993), his first feature in English, was followed by Stardom (2000), a film that looked at the world of fashion. Neither achieved the subtlety and texture of his earlier work.
The overwhelming success of The Barbarian Invasions (2003), which marked both a return to the French language and to the characters who had peopled The Decline of the American Empire (1986), showed that Arcand had lost none of his powers of observation. The film won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival (best screenplay, and best actor for Marie-Josée Croze), Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival and the prestigious Oscar for Best Foreign Film. In 2005 Arcand was named Companion of the Order of Canada, which recognizes individuals for exceptional achievements of national or international significance.- Actor
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Robert Lepage is one of the foremost stage directors today and a leading figure in the Canadian avant garde, attracting particular attention for his multimedia-rich theatrical presentations as well as his innovative work with Shakespearian drama and opera.- Director
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Jean-Marc Vallée was a Canadian filmmaker, editor and screenwriter from Montreal. He directed Black List, C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria, Wild, Dallas Buyers Club, Los Locos, Loser Love and Café de Flore. He also created the HBO shows Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects. He was married to Chantal Cadieux and had two sons. He passed away on Christmas Day 2021.- Producer
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- Camera and Electrical Department
Academy Award, eight-time Emmy nominated, and Peabody, DGA, and Sundance winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger has been a pioneering force in nonfiction filmmaking for over three decades. In a recent Bloomberg profile, Berlinger was described as a "true crime hit factory" for Netflix, whose work has "redefined crime documentaries as a vehicle for social justice." The article quoted Adam Del Deo, VP for original documentary series at Netflix: "He's the gold standard in true crime. The moral compass that he has, the sense of responsibility he has for victims and for getting the story right and shining a light on it, that is something that is very unique." Berlinger is the creator of landmark documentaries such as Sundance winner BROTHER'S KEEPER, which influenced a generation of documentarians and the PARADISE LOST Trilogy, which helped lead to the release of the wrongfully-convicted West Memphis Three, and METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER, a film that redefined the rockumentary genre. CRUDE, which examined the dire issue of oil pollution in the ancestral homeland of thousands of Ecuadorians in the Amazon Rainforest, won 22 human rights, environmental and film festival awards and triggered a high profile First Amendment battle with the Chevron Corporation. Eight of Berlinger's films, including his Emmy-nominated 2012 Paul Simon documentary, UNDER AFRICAN SKIES, have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and have earned three Grand Jury Prize nominations. He has also received multiple awards from the Directors Guild of America, the National Board of Review, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Critics Choice awards.
Berlinger holds a streak of chart-topping series on Netflix, attracting enormous audiences and igniting global conversation by becoming the first filmmaker to simultaneously cover the same subject in scripted and unscripted forms with CONVERSATIONS WITH A KILLER: THE TED BUNDY TAPES and EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL, AND VILE, which starred Zac Efron, Lilly Collins, and John Malkovich and sold to Netflix in a Sundance bidding war for almost $10 million. The recently released film GHISLAINE MAXWELL: FILTHY RICH and doc series BERNIE MADOFF: THE MONSTER OF WALL STREET also both debuted as the #1 documentaries upon their release.- Producer
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Jennifer Baichwal was born in Montréal and grew up in Victoria, British Columbia. She studied philosophy and theology at McGill University, receiving an MA in 1994.
Jennifer has been directing and producing documentaries for 25 years. Among other films, installations and lens-based projects, she has made 10 feature documentaries which have played all over the world and won multiple awards nationally and internationally.
Jennifer has taught film at the undergraduate and graduate level at York University. She has given workshops and lectures at a number of institutions (UC Santa Barbara, Bowdoin College, McGill University, among others). She sits on the board of Swim Drink Fish Canada, and has been a Director of the Board of the Toronto International Film Festival since 2016.- Director
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- Camera and Electrical Department
Edward Burtynsky was born on 22 February 1955 in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He is a director, known for Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018), Watermark (2013) and Great Lakes Untamed (2022).- Director
- Actor
- Costume Designer
Tom Ford is an American fashion designer, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He gained fame as the creative director at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. In 2006, Ford launched his own "Tom Ford" label.
Ford directed the films A Single Man (2009) and Nocturnal Animals (2016), both films were Oscar-nominated.
His directorial debut A Single Man is based on the novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood. The film starred Colin Firth who was nominated for an Academy Award.
In 2016 he directed Nocturnal Animals, an adaptation of the Austin Wright novel Tony and Susan. The film starred Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Armie Hammer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Laura Linney.- Writer
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Probably the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmaker to emerge from Denmark since Carl Theodor Dreyer over 60 years earlier, Lars von Trier studied film at the Danish Film School and attracted international attention with his very first feature, The Element of Crime (1984). A highly distinctive blend of film noir and German Expressionism with stylistic nods to Dreyer, Andrei Tarkovsky and Orson Welles, its combination of yellow-tinted monochrome cinematography (pierced by shafts of blue light) and doom-haunted atmosphere made it an unforgettable visual experience. His subsequent features Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991) have been equally ambitious both thematically and visually, though his international fame is most likely to be based on The Kingdom (1994), a TV soap opera blending hospital drama, ghost story and Twin Peaks (1990)-style surrealism that was so successful in Denmark that it was released internationally as a 280-minute theatrical feature.- Actor
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Mathieu Kassovitz was born on 3 August 1967 in Paris, France. He is an actor and director, known for Amélie (2001), La haine (1995) and The Fifth Element (1997).- Director
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Gaspar Noé is an Argentinian filmmaker and screenwriter who lives in France. He is the son of Luis Felipe Noé, an Argentinian artist. He directed I Stand Alone, Irréversible, Enter the Void, Love, Climax, Carne, Lux Æterna, Sodomites and Vortex. His films are known for having a sensory overload style, most notably in Enter the Void. He is married to Lucile Hadzihalilovic.- Actor
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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).- Producer
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- Director
Baltasar Kormákur is an actor, producer and director whose work spans theater, movies and television. Born in Reykjavik, Iceland, he graduated as an actor from Iceland's National Academy of Fine Arts in 1990. He was immediately signed on by the National Theatre of Iceland, where he worked as one of the leading young performing artists until 1997. During the last two years of his assignment, he also directed several ambitious works, after having produced and directed highly popular, independent stage productions alongside his projects with the National Theatre. In 2000, he wrote, directed, acted in and produced the feature film "101 Reykjavik," which became an international hit and earned the Discovery Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Subsequently, Variety selected him as one of the "10 Directors to Watch," along with Alejandro González Iñárritu, Lukas Moodysson, Christopher Nolan and other newcomers at the time.
Soon after, Kormákur started Blueeyes Productions and since then has maintained his focus on feature film writing, producing, and directing. His films "The Sea," "A Little Trip To Heaven," "Jar City" and "White Night Wedding" have all been very successful in Iceland, and won numerous international awards. Kormákur's "The Deep," which eerily captures the tragic real-life story of the lone survivor of a capsized fishing boat off the frigid Icelandic coast, premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and went on to become Iceland's Oscar nominee and was shortlisted for the foreign language Academy Award. It opened in Iceland on September 21, 2012 and took in over 50% of the country's box office receipts that weekend and earned a record number of Edda Awards, 11 in all, including Best Film of the Year, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Kormákur has also directed features in the United States, including "Inhale," an independent film produced by the LA based 26 Films, starring Dermot Mulroney, Diane Kruger and Sam Shepard and "Contraband," starring Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, and Kate Beckinsale, which took first place at the US box office during its opening weekend, early January 2012. Universal Pictures released "Contraband," which was a remake of Oskar Johansson's "Reykjavik Rotterdam," that starred Kormákur and he produced with Agnes Johansen through his Blueeyes Productions, along with Working Title Films.
Kormákur's next film was the thriller "2 Guns," starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, which Universal Pictures will release in August 2013. Other projects include the HBO pilot "The Missionary," a spy thriller he will direct and Mark Wahlberg, Steve Levinson and Malcolm Gladwell will produce; "Everest," the cautionary tale and real life adventure on the mountain in 1996 when eight climbers died in the span of two days, due to a series of horrific mishaps and bad decisions. Working Title Films and Emmett/Furla Productions will produce "Everest" with Kormákur. Also, "Viking," a big budget action adventure set in the world of the famed Norse warriors, which will film in Iceland. Kormákur optioned Iceland's beloved, Nobel Prize-winning book Independent People to develop as a feature film and will produce the American remake of "Jar City" along with CEO of Lava Bear Films, David Linde. He is also producing the Icelandic drama "Rocketman," which acclaimed Icelandic filmmaker Dagur Kari is directing.- Director
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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
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George Roy Hill was never able to 'hit it off' with the critics despite the fact that 2 of his films - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and The Sting (1973) - had remained among the top 10 box office hits by 1976. His work was frequently derided as 'impersonal' or lacking in stylistic trademarks. Andrew Sarris famously referred to it as 'idiosyncratic, odious, oiliness'. Hill, himself didn't help his own cause by shunning the limelight, avoiding appearances on chat shows and often keeping the press off his sets.
In a rare interview for a book by Edward Shores in 1983, he declared: "I find publicity distasteful, and I don't think it does the picture any good to focus on the director" (LA Times, Dec. 28 2002). Conversely, Hill was 'commercially reliable', a winner with the public and with the academy, picking up an Oscar and a Director's Guild Award for "The Sting" and a BAFTA for "Butch". At his best, Hill was an 'actor's director': a gifted storyteller, with a powerful sense of narrative, and a nostalgic flair for detail. His world was inhabited by individualists, often outsiders, or loners, harbouring unattainable ideals or fantasies, or trying to escape from the realities of a humdrum existence. According to biographer Andrew Horton, Hill framed "a serious view of life in a comic-ironic vein, manipulating genres for his own purposes" (A. Horton, "The Films of George Roy Hill", p.7).
Hill was born to a wealthy Roman Catholic family of Irish background (owners of the Minneapolis Tribune) and educated at private school, followed by graduate studies in music at Yale under the auspices of composer Paul Hindemith. While at university, he became involved with the Yale Dramatic Society and was at one time elected its president. After his graduation, he served as a transport pilot with the U.S. Marines for the duration of World War II. Hill was recalled as a night fighter pilot for the Korean War, rising to the rank of major. From this, Hill developed a lifelong passion for flying which often reflected in his films (he held a pilot's license from the age of seventeen and later acquired a 1930 Waco biplane, which he took on spins in his spare time -- whenever he was not indulging his other favourite pastimes of reading history or listening to recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach). In 1949, he gained his B.A. in literature from Trinity College, Dublin.
Remaining in Ireland, Hill first acted on stage with Cyril Cusack's company, making his debut in "The Devil's Disciple" at the Gaiety Theatre. He then appeared on Broadway in "Richard II" and "The Taming of the Shrew". After Korea, he divided his time between writing/directing live anthology TV (1954-59) and directing plays on and off Broadway (1957-62).
Hill's cinematic breakthrough came with Period of Adjustment (1962), featuring an up-and-coming Jane Fonda (Hill had previously directed the original Tennessee Williams play on Broadway, featuring Barbara Baxley in the Fonda part). After eliciting strong performances from both Geraldine Page and Wendy Hiller in his filming of Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic (1963), he followed up with a moderately successful comedy The World of Henry Orient (1964) which centred around a second rate pianist (Peter Sellers) as the object of fantasies by 2 teenage girls. This films put him on the map.
However, his fourth film, Hawaii (1966), shot at the cost of $15 million (a little bit more than $100 million, adjusted for inflation), was a critical and box office failure, though quickly redeemed by the exuberant Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), one of the best musicals of the 1960's (and possibly the zaniest ever made!). It was Hill's next pair of films - using the same pair of actors - which was to firmly cement his place at the top.
Hill was instrumental in securing the serendipitous pairing of Paul Newman with Robert Redford for the first of his two massive box office hits: "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". He tenaciously fought studio executives who envisaged more seasoned performers like Jack Lemmon and Warren Beatty (or, possibly, Steve McQueen) in the respective parts. Hill's military discipline and predilection for stubbornness prevailed, while it was Newman who worked on Hill in setting the humorous tone for the picture. "Butch and Sundance" effectively reinvigorated the western genre. The Newman-Redford chemistry resumed with the best caper comedy of its day, "The Sting", which was inspired by the exploits of Fred and Charlie Gondorf, famous practitioners of the 'big store' confidence racket in the early 1900's. Complete with a clever trick ending, this was, arguably, Hill's crowning achievement.
To lend the film authenticity, Hill used very little camera movement and shot the picture in the 'flat-camera' style so typical of Warner Brothers gangster films of the 30's and 40's. The inter-titles - with drawings reminiscent of The Saturday Evening Post - helped lend the film a bit of 'retro-cachet' as well. Aided by Henry Bumstead's elaborately constructed, 'aged' sets, rotogravure cinematography by Robert Surtees and costumes by Edith Head, the film grossed some $68.4 million (almost $315million, adjusted for inflation, in '17) during its initial run. It went on to garner seven Oscars.
Sadly, none of Hill's later efforts ever came close to emulating these successes, not even a pet project -- The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) -- for which Hill provided the original story (about a pioneer flying ace (Redford) whose quest to prove himself is stymied by progress and changing values). Slap Shot (1977), a drama about minor league ice hockey, was another near miss. It failed to find mass audience support despite the star power of Paul Newman, mainly because of its excessive violence and crass language. However, it gained something of a cult following among sports enthusiasts in later years. Hill sadly rounded off his career with a lame duck farce, misleadingly titled Funny Farm (1988).
By then, Hill had left Hollywood to teach drama at Yale. He also donated original materials, including story boards, interviews, stills, scene sketches and set designs from the making of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) to the Sterling Memorial Library in New Haven, Connecticut. One of few entirely unpretentious, self-effacing film makers whose directness and confrontational manner unnerved actors (Newman and Redford excepted!) and studio execs alike, Hill died in New York from Parkinson's Disease on December 27, 2002.- Director
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As the son of a Lufthansa manager, Henckel von Donnersmarck spent his childhood and school years in New York, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Brussels, where he passed his international high school diploma in 1991. He then spent two years studying in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) with the following job as a Russian teacher. From 1993 to 1996 he studied PPE philosophy, political science and economics at New College, Oxford. In 1996 he completed a directing internship with Richard Attenborough. In 1997 he began studying feature film directing at the University of Television and Film in Munich. The four-minute short film "Dobermann" was made in 1999, for which he also wrote the book. The work received the rating "Particularly Valuable" and became part of the "Next Generation Role" of "German Cinema in Cannes". At the same time, the work marked his national breakthrough with numerous awards, including the Max Ophüls Prize in 2000.
This was followed by a commissioned work for Universal and Gaumont TV, "Les Mythes Urbains" from 2001. In 2002, he directed the short film "The Templar" in collaboration with producers Max Wiedemann and Quirin Berg. Awarded as "particularly valuable", the five-minute film was shown as part of the Hof Film Festival. The work was awarded, among other things, the Eastman Prize and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Prize in 2003. Henckel von Donnersmarck became a German star of international cinema with his first feature film "The Lives of Others". In 2006 he was awarded the "Bavarian Film Prize", the "European Film Prize", the "Peace Prize for German Film", the "Quadriga Prize" and a nomination for the "Golden Globe".
On February 25, 2007, "The Lives of Others" was awarded the "Oscar" for "Best Foreign Language Film" at the 79th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, which also marked his international breakthrough as a filmmaker. In 2010 he directed his second feature film, the romantic thriller "The Tourist", starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.
In his private life, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is married to the lawyer Christiane Asschenfeldt and is the father of two children.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Paul Verhoeven graduated from the University of Leiden, with a degree in math and physics. He entered the Royal Netherlands Navy, where he began his film career by making documentaries for the Navy and later for TV. In 1969, he directed the popular Dutch TV series, Floris (1969), about a medieval knight. This featured actor Rutger Hauer, who has appeared in many of Verhoeven's later films. Verhoeven's first feature, Wat zien ik (1971) (trans. "What do I See?"), was released in 1971. However, it was his second, Turkish Delight (1973), with its combination of raw sexuality and a poignant story-line, that gained him great popularity in the Netherlands, especially with male audiences. When his films, especially Soldier of Orange (1977) and The 4th Man (1983), received international recognition, Verhoeven moved to the US. His first US film was Flesh+Blood (1985) in 1985, but it was RoboCop (1987) and, especially, Total Recall (1990) that made him a big box office success. Sometimes accused of portraying excessive violence in his films, Verhoeven replies that he is only recording the violence of society. Verhoeven has co-scripted two of his films: Soldier of Orange (1977) and Flesh+Blood (1985). He also directed an episode of the HBO The Hitchhiker (1983) TV series. Several of his films have been photographed by Jost Vacano, including the hit cult film, Starship Troopers (1997), starring Casper Van Dien.