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Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylized Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and attitudes expressed in classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression.
Robert Earl Wise was an American film director, producer, and editor. He won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his musical films West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). He was also nominated for Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and directed and produced The Sand Pebbles (1966), which was nominated for Best Picture.
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
L.A. Confidential is a 1997 American neo-noir crime film directed, produced, and co-written by Curtis Hanson. The screenplay by Hanson and Brian Helgeland is based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel of the same name, the third book in his L.A. Quartet series. The film tells the story of a group of LAPD officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity. The title refers to the 1950s scandal magazine Confidential, portrayed in the film as Hush-Hush.
Guy Edward Pearce is an Australian actor. He started his career portraying Mike Young in the Australian television series Neighbours. Pearce received international attention for his breakout role in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and subsequently took starring roles in Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997), Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000) and Simon Wells's The Time Machine (2002). He is also known for his performances in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2009), Kathryn Bigelow's war drama The Hurt Locker (2009) and Tom Hooper's historical drama The King's Speech (2010). He has appeared in TED 2023, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant (2017) as Peter Weyland, the Marvel action film Iron Man 3 (2013) as Aldrich Killian, and the historical biopic Mary Queen of Scots (2018) as William Cecil.
Alexander Proyas is an Australian filmmaker. Proyas is best known for directing the films The Crow (1994), Dark City (1998), I, Robot (2004), Knowing (2009), and Gods of Egypt (2016).
Roger Lindsey Donaldson is an Australian and New Zealand film director, screenwriter, and producer. His 1977 debut film, Sleeping Dogs, is considered landmark work of New Zealand cinema, as one of the country’s first films to attract large-scale critical and commercial success. He has subsequently directed 17 feature films, working in Hollywood and the United Kingdom, as well as his native country.
William Cameron Menzies was an American film production designer and art director as well as a film director and producer during a career spanning five decades. He began his career during the silent era, and later pioneered the use of color in film for dramatic effect.
Rian Craig Johnson is an American filmmaker. He made his directorial debut with the neo-noir mystery film Brick (2005), which received positive reviews and grossed nearly $4 million on a $450,000 budget. Transitioning to higher-profile films, Johnson achieved mainstream recognition for writing and directing the science-fiction thriller Looper (2012) to critical and commercial success. Johnson landed his largest project when he wrote and directed the space opera Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), which grossed over $1 billion. He returned to the mystery genre with Knives Out (2019) and its sequel Glass Onion (2022), both of which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, respectively.
Guy Hendrix Dyas is a British-American production designer known for his collaboration with directors such as Pablo Larraín, Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan, Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.
Keith Ian Raywood is an American production designer best known as Art Director for Saturday Night Live (SNL) since 1985 and Production Designer for SNL since 1990. He has designed music videos and live performances for major recording artists, international and national commercial spots, MSG & MSG+ networks, and theatre productions both regional and in New York.
Lawrence Pearce is a film screenwriter, director and author. He was born in London in 1980.
Andy Nicholson is an English production designer who has worked on various films, including Gravity, Divergent, Assassin's Creed, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Nicholson has also worked as an art director for numerous films, including several by director Tim Burton.
Neasa Hardiman is an Irish director of both fiction and nonfiction, predominantly known for her television work.
Christopher Nolan is a British-American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His feature directorial debut was the neo-noir crime thriller Following (1998) which was made on a shoestring budget of $6,000. Two years later, he directed the psychological thriller Memento (2000) which starred Guy Pearce as a man suffering from anterograde amnesia searching for his wife's killers. Similar to his debut feature it had a non-linear narrative structure, and was his breakthrough film. It was acclaimed by critics and was a surprise commercial success. For the film Nolan received his first nomination for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film, and for writing its screenplay he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He next directed the mystery thriller remake Insomnia (2002) which starred Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank. It was his first film for Warner Bros., and was a critical and commercial success.
Zone 414 is a 2021 American science fiction neo-noir thriller film directed by Andrew Baird in his feature-film debut, and written by Bryan Edward Hill. It stars Guy Pearce, Matilda Lutz, Jonathan Aris and Travis Fimmel. The film is about a wealthy robot designer who hires a private investigator to find his adult daughter, who goes missing inside a walled city where humans can hire humanoid robots for sexual pleasure.
Spears is an Irish neo-noir thriller written and directed by Gerard Lough and starring Aidan O'Sullivan, Bobby Callaway, Nigel Brennan, Michael Parle, Yalda Shahidi, Rebecca Rose Flynn and Thomas Sharkey. The film was shot on location in four countries and was released on 18 February 2022.
Sunrise is a 2024 horror film directed by Andrew Baird and written by Ronan Blaney. It stars Alex Pettyfer, Crystal Yu, William Gao, Kurt Yaeger, Olwen Fouéré and Guy Pearce.