External links
- Charlotte Wells at IMDb
- Charlotte Wells [1]
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Charlotte Wells | |
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| Born | Charlotte Anna Wells 13 June 1987 Morningside, Edinburgh, Scotland |
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| Years active | 2014–present |
| Website | charlotte-wells |
Charlotte Wells (born 13 June 1987) is a Scottish director, writer, and producer. She is known for her feature film debut Aftersun (2022), [1] which premiered in 2022 during Critics' Week at Cannes Film Festival, receiving 121 nominations and 33 awards, including Gotham and British Independent Film Awards. [2] Wells has worked on numerous other films, such as Blue Christmas (2017), and her films have screened at festivals worldwide.
Wells was born in Edinburgh, and attended secondary school at the independent George Heriot's School. [3] Wells did not live with her father, who died when she was 16, [4] but remembers him as a very involved parent, despite the living situation. The father-daughter dynamic is something she explores throughout her filmography, from her first short film Tuesday, to her most recent work, Aftersun. She often talks about Aftersun being an autobiographical account of her grief over the passing of her father. [5]
Wells was interested in film from a young age, but did not initially pursue it. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Classics from King's College London and a Master of Arts from Oxford University. She went into finance and rediscovered film through helping Callum Just, a school friend, run Digital Orchard, a post-production and DIT agency. [6] She used this experience to apply to New York University's joint business and film graduate program with the intention of becoming a producer. [7] She completed a dual Master of Fine Arts and Master of Business Administration at Tisch School of the Arts and the Stern School.
Before starting her career in the film industry as a producer, Wells helped run Digital Orchard, a company specializing in film, finishing images, developing film, and digital imaging. Wells began creating films during her enrollment at NYU, where she originally intended to be a producer. At NYU, she began her ventures into filmmaking, writing and directing three short films.
Tuesday follows 16-year-old Allie who is learning to cope with a big loss, introducing the themes of fatherhood and personal trauma, characteristic of Wells's films. The girl (Megan McGill) goes to her deceased father's residence and grieves her loss. The film presumably takes place in Scotland and reflects Wells's experience of her father's death when she was 16. [8] The film earned Wells the Best Writer Nominee at BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards 2016. [9]
Laps is a New York-based short film about a woman who is sexually assaulted on a crowded subway train. Like Tuesday, Laps explores a severe trauma and how life continues despite it. The handheld camera emphasizes the claustrophobic nature of the subway. The film features Thea Brooks, and earned Wells Special Jury Recognition at the SXSW Short Film Awards and Special Jury Award for Editing at Sundance 2017. [10]
The longest of Wells's three shorts, Blue Christmas is a period piece about a Scottish debt collector named Alec, in the late 1960s who goes to work on Christmas Eve instead of spending time with his wife and son, due in part to her worsening psychosis. It follows him around town, subjecting other families to displeasure at his presence, and collecting a television from one family. He eats dinner with one of the people he visits before going home late to see his wife trying to burn down the Christmas Tree with a lit cigarette while his son tries to physically hold her back. The son sees him come in and is angry with his father. Alec steps in to intervene, comforting his wife and talking her out of her episode. She ends up dropping the cigarette onto the tree as her body relaxes, burning up the tree and the rest of the room. The film's title is a reference to the song Blue Christmas. Elvis Presley's version is heard toward the end. The film features Jamie Robson and Michelle Duncan. [11]
Wells was a fellow at the 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs with her feature film debut Aftersun , which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim. She was also a producer on the 2019 film Raf, which premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. [12]
Aftersun is a coming-of-age film that tells the story of a young woman, Sophie, recalling a holiday she took with her father, Calum (Paul Mescal), 20 years earlier, for Calum's 31st birthday. The 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) does not spend much time with her father, but they have an annual vacation together. They go to a Turkish budget resort, and each wants to bond and connect with the other, but Calum struggles with depression, creating a barrier. Adult Sophie tries to remember her father by looking back on this holiday and piecing together her memories with the help of the videos they took on the vacation.
The film is shot on 35mm film and partly by the actors themselves on a MiniDV camera. [13] This camera is used for many of the scenes with Sophie during the holiday, including playing with friends at the resort and spending time with her father. Wells's father died when she was 16 and she lived apart from him, though she did not feel that he was uninvolved with her upbringing. [4] The father-daughter dynamic was not something Wells initially tried to uncover in the film; it arose during its making, specifically during the screenwriting. [14]
Aftersun received 121 nominations, and 33 awards, including the British Independent Film Award for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Wells [15] and a nomination for Best Actor at the 2023 Academy Awards for Mescal. [16] The National Board of Review named the film the Best Directorial Debut of 2022. [17] Wells also received the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award at the Gotham Awards and the Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer at the BAFTA Awards. [18]
In her final year at NYU, Wells began to conceptualize Aftersun, working with her independent study professor to ideate the premise for a film about a father and his preteen daughter on vacation. After watching a handful of films about fathers and daughters with her film professor to get inspired, Wells embarked on a solo trip to Cyprus where she spent about two weeks observing the place and attempting to write the script. She described the trip as a “self-imposed writing retreat,” where she immersed herself in the place that became the setting of the film. The two pages she returned home with were the only two pages of the project she had for the following two years. [19]
These first two pages outlined each day of the characters’ vacation, the physical actions that became an illustration of the characters’ relationships with each other and themselves, their emotionality, and development. Most of the plot develops through the spaces between these actions and the emotions of the actors, making it very difficult to display through a script. For these first two years, Wells was holding most of the plot in her head, until she eventually came up with an index card system to help her showcase her thought process and the direction of the film. [20]
The rave sequences that drive the film were not present in this first draft, they came later. [21] They originated as a tiny spark of inspiration from editor and film school peer Blair Mclendon’s short film I’m the One Who’s Singing, [22] which led Wells to the complex and incredibly ambitious representation of her own grief and memory that the rave scenes in Aftersun came to represent. [23] [24]
The film took Wells about 8 years to write overall, (The LA Times quoted her saying it took 7 years, but she has also said 8 in a Podcast interview with Giles Alderson and Dom Lenoir), [25] with the majority of that time being spent on world-building and “laying the foundations” for the film. The actual writing of the script happened very quickly, after which Wells spent 6 months attempting to redraft it, which she described as “just moving around commas.” [26] She then sent the draft to a producer who got on board with the project, and, after some fairly significant rewrites, Aftersun was born.
In February 2024, Wells directed her first advertisement, a video for Quaker Oats titled "You've Got This". It follows the relationship of a father and son across time, Quaker Oats connects them all through the stages of life. In discussion of the script for the commercial, Wells said that ideas of familial relationships and the passage of time are front of mind when she writes, as evidenced by the result and her other work. [27]
In July 2024, Wells directed advertisements for the American Red Cross titled "What's Your Type?" and "Growing Up". [28] The first was created with the goal of relatability and encouraging people to donate blood. After beginning with upbeat music and ordinary lighting, the commercial takes a quick turn to a hospital, where the cast is injured and sickly, in need of blood donations to save their lives. [28] "Growing Up" was intended to target Hispanic audiences and focuses on intimate family moments. It also tells an emotional story, ending with the importance and growing necessity of blood donations. [28]
In May 2024, Wells directed a video for Romy's song "Always Forever". The two were close to collaborating earlier in their careers, but never found the right time. [29] The video is a departure from Wells's previous work both thematically and stylistically, but maintains some of her visual style, featuring collaborators from the club scenes in Aftersun .
Wells also served as the Jury President of the Bright Horizons competition at the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival, where Aftersun debuted in Australia in 2022 as part of the same competition in its first year. [30] Simón Mesa Soto's A Poet won the award and its $140,000 prize. [31] Wells also led the jury for the Luigi De Laurentiis debut film award at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, where Nastia Korkia's Short Summer won.
All of Wells’ films highlight a kind of personal trauma and explore how people grapple with these experiences. In Tuesday (2015) and Aftersun (2022), that trauma is reliving the loss of a father through the eyes of his daughter, mirroring Wells’ own journey with grief as a teenager. [32] Aftersun also highlights depression and the personal trauma that goes along with that struggle. [33] Laps (2016) is an account of a woman getting sexually assaulted in a crowded subway car in New York City. Despite there being dozens of people around and alert while this is happening, it goes completely unnoticed, leaving her alone to figure out what to do next or even how to respond emotionally. [34] In Blue Christmas (2017), Wells’ tells the story of a man who chooses to work on Christmas Eve instead of staying to care for his wife as her psychosis worsens. He spends the whole day working, doing anything to stay out of the house and ignore everything that is unfolding inside. [35]
Not all of Wells’ films are autobiographical, but they all revolve around very specific and similar experiences of isolating personal traumas. While her characters are never truly alone, in that they have families and people to interact with, they are the only ones experiencing the specific trauma, isolating themselves from the people around them.
Most of Wells’ films focus on fathers and the complexities of their lives, the one exception to this theme being her 2016 short film Laps. Tuesday (2015), follows a teenage girl, Allie, who is grappling with the loss of her father. Rather than a physical representation of the dad, Wells’ represents him and his life through his belongings in his house. [36] The image that emerges of him as the film continues is one of an interesting and dynamic man, not just Allie’s father, before it slowly becomes clear that he has passed away. [37]
The protagonist in her more recent short, Blue Christmas (2017), is a husband and father, Alec, who goes to work on Christmas Eve rather than taking care of his son and wife who is in the midst of a worsening psychotic episode. The film follows Alec throughout his work day, showcasing his life as a debt collector and revealing bits of a personal life separate from his family. The film paints a complex picture of Alec, attempting to understand him as more than just a father. It is revealed that he may have been unfaithful to his wife, but towards the end of the film he is shown comforting her and providing her with support. Through that scene the viewer is invited to empathize with him rather than criticize him for betraying his family. He is defined by more than just his relationship to his family. [38]
Aftersun (2022), Wells’ first feature film expands on this theme of complex fathers through the character of Calum, a father struggling with depression. The film takes place in the memories of Calum’s daughter Sophie, who is watching videos of a holiday she took with her dad when she was 11. The film foregrounds the duality of Calum’s identity as a father and a person struggling. Throughout the film he goes from intense sadness immediately into playful banter, switching the second he sees Sophie. [39] He works so hard to hide his personhood from her in order to show up as her father and nothing more, which only works to highlight his complexities and internal struggle. [40]
| Year | Title | Credited as | Notes | Ref(s) | ||
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| Director | Producer | Writer | ||||
| 2014 | F to 7th | No | Yes | No | TV series (8 episodes) | [41] |
| 2015 | Tuesday | Yes | Yes | Yes | Short | [41] [42] [43] |
| 2015 | In a Room Below | No | Yes | No | Short | [44] |
| 2016 | Red Folder | No | Yes | No | Short | [45] |
| 2016 | Briefcase | No | Yes | No | Short | [46] |
| 2016 | Alice | No | Yes | No | Short | [47] |
| 2017 | Laps | Yes | No | Yes | Short | [41] |
| 2017 | Blue Christmas | Yes | No | Yes | Short | [41] |
| 2017 | Eté | No | Yes | No | Short | [48] |
| 2019 | I'm the One Who's Singing | No | Yes | No | Short | [49] |
| 2019 | Raf | No | Yes | No | Feature | [50] |
| 2022 | Aftersun | Yes | No | Yes | Feature | [51] |
| Year | Association | Category | Film | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | BAFTA Awards, Scotland | New Talent Award: Best Writer | Tuesday | Nominated | [52] |
| 2016 | Encounters Film Festival | International Competition | Nominated | [53] | |
| 2018 | London Critics Film Festival | British/Irish Short Film of the Year | Nominated | [54] | |
| 2017 | Sundance Film Festival | Short Film Grand Jury Prize | Laps | Nominated | [55] |
| 2017 | SXSW Film Festival | ||||
| SXSW Grand Jury Award | Nominated | [56] | |||
| Special Jury Recognition | Won | [57] | |||
| 2017 | Encounters Film Festival | International Competition | Nominated | [58] | |
| 2017 | Toronto International Film Festival | Best International Short Film | Blue Christmas | Nominated | [59] |
| 2018 | Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival | International Competition: Best Student Film | Nominated | [60] | |
| 2018 | Sundance Film Festival | Short Film Grand Jury Prize | Nominated | [61] | |
| 2018 | Savannah Film Festival | Best Student Short | Won | [62] | |
| 2022 | British Independent Film Award | Best British Independent Film | Aftersun | Won | [63] |
| Best Director | Won | [63] | |||
| Best Screenplay | Won | [63] | |||
| Best Debut Screenwriter | Nominated | [64] | |||
| 2022 | Cannes Film Festival | ||||
| Critics' Week Grand Prize | Nominated | [65] | |||
| Golden Camera | Nominated | [66] | |||
| French Touch Prize of the Critics' Week Grand Jury | Won | [67] | |||
| 2022 | Gotham Independent Film Awards | Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award | Won | [2] | |
| 2022 | New York Film Critics Circle | Best First Film | Won | [68] | |
| 2022 | National Society of Film Critics | Best Director | Won | ||
| 2023 | Directors Guild of America | Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film | Won | [69] | |
| 2023 | BAFTA Awards | Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer | Won | ||
| Outstanding British Film of the Year | Nominated | [70] | |||
| 2023 | BAFTA Awards, Scotland | ||||
| Best Director - Fiction | Won | [71] | |||
| Best Feature Film | Nominated | [72] | |||
| 2023 | Critics Choice Awards | Best Original Screenplay | Nominated | [73] |
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