TSPDT

Key Production Country: UK
Key Genres: Drama, Coming-of-Age, Romantic Drama, Slice of Life, Comedy, Road Movie
Key Collaborators: Robbie Ryan (Cinematographer), Nicolas Chauderge (Editor)Helen Scott (Production Designer), Natalie Press (Leading Actress)

"Bristling with a wild, untamed naturalism, the films of British auteur Andrea Arnold are bracing immersions into the worlds of the young, the restless, and the dispossessed. She established her bold vision with the wrenching, Academy Award–winning short Wasp. Arnold’s interest in nonprofessional actors led to the discovery of Katie Jarvis, whose astonishing performance lights up Fish Tank, an electrifying coming-of-age drama costarring Michael Fassbender. And her fearless commitment to raw, elemental filmmaking breathes fresh life into her take on Wuthering Heights, a richly textured adaptation that captures the novel’s rebellious spirit." - The Criterion Channel

"After years working in children's television, Andrea Arnold came relatively late to directing, but her films instantly made ripples internationally, attracting enormous acclaim. Hard to pin down but often centred on female, working-class characters and marked by simple, unsettling images and intricate editing, their surface harshness is shot through with complexity and compassion." - Sheila Johnston (BFI Screenonline)

"Arnold is considered one of the pre-eminent artists of contemporary British cinema for a reason… This is a filmmaker of authenticity in the vein of ‘gritty’ Brit social realists like Ken Loach and Alan Clarke, and she has been generously garlanded for it… Arnold finds the worlds of her films at the fringes, where young, often emotionally volatile people struggle to find their ideal existence within the confines of suffocating working-class milieus. Arnold’s films are experiential, but the experience can be overwhelming." - Brogan Morris (BFI, 2021)

"Despite her relatively small body of work, Arnold has established herself as one of the UK’s most respected filmmakers. While she follows in the realist tradition of fellow directors such as Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, her films take the characters’ situations as a given, focusing on the everyday details of their lives rather than tackling thematically the larger social issues. Her approach gives her work a refreshing and grounded honesty that eschews unwarranted sentiment in favour of natural character development and plausible narrative outcomes." - Irish Film Institute

"Andrea Arnold has developed a solid global following on the back of multiple cinematic gems that have captured the imagination of film fans worldwide. Through projects such as Fish Tank and American Honey, Arnold has proven that she has a firm grasp on the art of social realism and its intimate relationship with cinema. In addition to the films she directed, Arnold has also worked on television shows like Transparent and Big Little Lies." - Swapnil Dhruv Bose (Far Out Magazine, 2022)