TSPDT

Key Production Countries: Greece, UK, USA, Ireland
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, Historical Film, Family Drama, Comedy Thriller, Satire
Key Collaborators: Efthymis Filippou (Screenwriter), Yorgos Mavropsaridis (Editor), Ed Guiney (Producer), Thimios Bakatakis (Cinematographer), Angeliki Papoulia (Leading Character Actress), Colin Farrell (Leading Actor), Rachel Weisz (Leading Actress), Olivia Colman (Leading Actress), Lee Magiday (Producer), Ceci Dempsey (Producer), Ariane Labed (Character Actress)

"Since his extraordinary second feature, Dogtooth (2009), Lanthimos has been notorious for a wild imagination and a sometimes aggressive form of absurdism… Dogtooth and its equally eccentric follow-up, Alps, brought Lanthimos attention as the flagbearer of what came to be dubbed Greece’s “weird wave” – a generation of film-makers all making very different works that were sometimes but not always anti-realist, and some more outré than others, although they shared a proudly anti-commercial ideology. His best-known contemporary is writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari." - Jonathan Romney (The Guardian, 2018)

"A central figure within the so-called 'weird wave' of Greek cinema, Yorgos Lanthimos started his career directing several dance and music videos, commercials, short films and theatre plays. His second feature film Dogtooth (2009) won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award in 2011. With his subsequent films Alps (2011), The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Lanthimos continued receiving critical acclaim and awards at several festivals." - International Film Festival Rotterdam

"From the critical and commercial fanfare his films generate, it is largely understood that Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the more interesting filmmakers to have emerged out of the new century. A markedly transnational filmmaker, between Dogtooth and The Favourite Lanthimos has managed to traverse the gap between the art-house and mainstream while not once sacrificing his unique style and worldview. His films, while often difficult, showcase his talents as a filmmaker, collaborator, and commentator on the human condition. Accompanied by a trademark acerbic wit, Lanthimos's films take aim at humanity's more contemptible and absurd designs as he explores a thematic preoccupation with, among other things, power, trauma, isolation, sex, and violence." - Bloomsbury (The Cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos)

"Absurd circumstances coupled with dark humor are the signature of Lanthimos and his writing partner, Efthymis Filippou. Oscar-nominated Dogtooth examined the deep psychological implications of three adult children living on their parents’ compound; Alps followed a business that replaces dead family members as a grief-recovery service. These scripts thrive on the strange pathologies of human behavior, accentuated by frigid dialogue and austere framing." - Issue Magazine

"Though he first came to attention as one of the leaders of the so-called Greek Weird Wave, Yorgos Lanthimos has always been more complex and harder to pin down than that term suggests. His cinema is, to be sure, wondrously, imaginatively bonkers (what other director would make a courtly costume drama that so prominently features duck racing?), but they are also wickedly funny, impeccably stylized, and piercingly insightful about the human condition, owing as much to Luis Buñuel as they do to Greek mythology. As Lanthimos continues to realize his boldly iconoclastic vision on an ever more ambitious scale, he has proven himself the rare auteur whose films have the power to provoke and entertain in equal measure.." - Film at Lincoln Center, 2019)

"I'm not interested in just trying to represent reality as it is. I can see that right in front of me." - Yorgos Lanthimos (Issue Magazine)