Samantha Jane Morton is an English actress. She is known for her work in independent film with dark and tragic themes, in particular period dramas and is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the BAFTA Fellowship, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award and nominations for two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Richard Stuart Linklater is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for making films that deal thematically with suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993); the Before trilogy of romance films: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the adult animated films Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood (2022); the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014); the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016); and the romantic comedy Hit Man (2023).
Before Sunrise is a 1995 romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Kim Krizan, and is the first installment in the Before trilogy. In the film, Jesse and Céline meet on a Eurail train and disembark in Vienna to spend the night together.
Before Sunset is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, from a story by Linklater and Kim Krizan. It is the first film by Warner Independent Pictures. The sequel to Before Sunrise (1995) and the second installment in the Before trilogy, Before Sunset follows Jesse (Hawke) and Céline (Delpy) as they reunite nine years later in Paris.
London to Brighton is a 2006 British neo-noir crime film written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams released to generally mixed to average critic reviews but was a box office failure, grossing $449,700 on a budget of $639,200.
Funny Ha Ha is a 2002 American film written and directed by Andrew Bujalski. It has been described as the first mumblecore film. The film was shot on 16 mm film on a very low budget. It deals with the lives of people in their twenties as they try to come to terms with life after college and confront the responsibilities of adulthood, if only to put them off for as long as possible.
Blindsight is a 2006 documentary film directed by Lucy Walker and produced by Sybil Robson Orr for Robson Entertainment. It premiered at 2006 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in the category Real to Reel.
Paranoid Park is a 2007 coming of age teen drama film written, directed and edited by Gus Van Sant. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Blake Nelson and takes place in Portland, Oregon. It is the story of a teenage skateboarder set against the backdrop of a police investigation into a mysterious death.
The Savages is a 2007 American black comedy-drama film written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. It stars Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Philip Bosco.
XXY is a 2007 Argentine drama film written and directed by Lucía Puenzo and starring Ricardo Darín, Valeria Bertuccelli, Inés Efron and Martín Piroyansky. Based on the short story Cinismo (Cynicism), included in the book Chicos (Boys) by author Sergio Bizzio, the film tells the story of a 15-year-old intersex person, the way her family copes with her condition and the ultimate decision that she must eventually make as she struggles to define her own gender identity within a society that expects certain behaviors from every individual.
Silent Light is a 2007 film written and directed by Carlos Reygadas. Filmed in a Mennonite colony close to Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua State, Northern Mexico, Silent Light tells the story of a Mennonite married man who falls in love with another woman, threatening his place in the conservative community. The dialogue is in Plautdietsch, the Low German dialect of the Mennonites. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards, but it did not make the shortlist. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 24th Independent Spirit Awards. It gained nine nominations, including all major categories, in the Ariel Awards, the Mexican national awards.
Encounters at the End of the World is a 2007 American documentary film by Werner Herzog about Antarctica and the people who choose to spend time there. It was released in North America on June 11, 2008, and distributed by ThinkFilm. At the 81st Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature.
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten is a 2007 documentary film directed by Julien Temple about Joe Strummer, the lead singer of the British punk rock band The Clash, that went on to win the British Independent Film Awards as Best British Documentary 2007. The film premiered 20 January 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It was also shown at the Dublin Film Festival on 24 February 2007.
Man on Wire is a 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Petit's 2002 book, To Reach the Clouds, released in paperback with the title Man on Wire. The title of the film is taken from the police report that led to the arrest of Petit, whose performance lasted for almost an hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside re-enactments and present-day interviews with the participants, including Barry Greenhouse, an insurance executive who served as the inside man.
Alex Holdridge is an American writer/director currently based in Berlin, Germany.
Goodbye Solo is a 2008 American drama film written and directed by Ramin Bahrani. It premiered as an official selection of the 2008 Venice Film Festival where it won the international film critic's FIPRESCI award for best film, and later had its North American premiere at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was distributed by Roadside Attractions. The film exhibits significant thematic and plot similarities to Abbas Kiarostami's 1997 film Taste of Cherry.
Go Go Tales is an independent 2007 film by Abel Ferrara. Ferrara based the film on The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, directed by John Cassavetes. It stars Willem Dafoe as a strip club owner and co-stars Bob Hoskins, Asia Argento and Matthew Modine. Ferrara had the cast improvise much of their lines. He described the film as his "first intentional comedy".
Unrelated is a 2007 British drama film written and directed by Joanna Hogg, starring Kathryn Worth, Tom Hiddleston, Mary Roscoe, David Rintoul and Henry Lloyd-Hughes. It was released in the US on 20 February 2008.
Andrew Haigh is an English filmmaker. He is best known for writing and directing the films Weekend (2011), 45 Years (2015), Lean on Pete (2017), and All of Us Strangers (2023). He also wrote and directed the HBO series Looking (2014–2015) and its film sequel Looking: The Movie (2016), as well as the BBC Two limited series The North Water (2021).
Small Axe is a British anthology film series, created and directed by Steve McQueen. The anthology consists of five films that tell distinct stories about the lives of West Indian immigrants in London from the 1960s to the 1980s. Two episodes of the series were selected into the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. The series premiered on 15 November 2020 on BBC One in the United Kingdom and on 20 November 2020 on Amazon Prime Video in the United States. The title references a proverb – "Small axe fall big tree" or "If you are the big tree, we are the small axe" – that was popularised by Bob Marley in his 1973 song "Small Axe".
