Yorgos Lanthimos

 ( Official Website ) 

Lanthimos's feature film career started with the 2001 mainstream Greek comedy film My Best Friend, which he co-directed with Lakis Lazopoulos. Robert Koehler of Variety declared "Lanthimos works mightily to make a big impression. As a result the is a sex farce on steroids, overflowing with energy and excessive curiosity about what the movie camera actually can do".

His sophomore project was the experimental and psychological drama Kinetta, which premiered at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival. The film revolves around three nameless protagonists as they attempt to film and photograph various badly reenacted struggles between a man and a woman at a Greek hotel. The film earned mixed to negative reviews. Roger Moore of Movie Nation described it as "overtly navel-gazing, obscure to the point of suggesting obscurant. It’s a 95 minute exercise in minimalism, Behaviorism, psychology and boredom." John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter wrote a positive review he stating, "The standoffish debut holds some pleasures for patient viewers" adding, "Lanthimos enjoys provoking us visually...The camera’s gaze is as idiosyncratic as the visions the Driver tries to bring to life, but unlike him, the film seems satisfied with what it creates."

In 2008 he directed a production of Natura morta in un fosso written by Fausto Paravidino at the Amore Theatre in Greece.

Lanthimos's fifth film was the absurdist black comedy The Lobster (2015) starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly. The script for this film won the ARTE International Award as Best CineMart Project at the 42nd International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film was selected to compete for the italic=no at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury Prize. Chris Nashawatay of Entertainment Weekly praised the film, saying that "Lanthimos' films aren't for everyone. They're deadpan and almost clinically detached. At times they feel like dispatches from a distant alien planet."

In 2017, Lanthimos directed the psychological horror film The Killing of a Sacred Deer starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman and Barry Keoghan. It premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the italic=no. Mark Kermode of The Guardian wrote: "As black comedy gives way to grand guignol, we are reminded of the tortured games that Michael Haneke once played upon his bourgeois protagonists and audiences." He also compared it to films such as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), and Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin.

He then directed the 16mm black and white silent film short Bleat (2022) starring Emma Stone and Damien Bonnard. Bleat was co-commissioned by the Greek National Opera and Athens-based cultural foundation NEON. The story, set on the Cyclades of Tenos, revolves around a woman in black who is mourning inside a simple house. The film has been described as experimental and surrealist in style and focuses on themes of loneliness, connection, death, and desire as well as human and animal interaction. The film has only been shown twice, first being at the Stavros Niarchos Hall in Athens in 2022, and the second at Alice Tully Hall at the New York Film Festival in 2023. Lanthimos designed Bleat to be screened only in theaters with a live orchestra and chorus.

In 2023, he directed and produced the coming of age dark comedy Poor Things, which is based on Poor Things. The film marked the third collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone, and also featured performances from Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, and Ramy Youssef. The film premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion. Kyle Smith of The Wall Street Journal described the film as "Sumptuous, dazzling and glorious". It went on to receive eleven nominations at the 96th Academy Awards, winning four (including the Academy Award for Best Actress for Emma Stone) as well as seven nominations at the 81st Golden Globes Awards, where it won Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. During the shooting of Poor Things, Yorgos photographed the behind the scenes, crew and actors. These documentations became Lanthimos' first photography monograph 'Dear God, the Parthenon is still broken' (Void, 2024).

For the anthology film Kinds of Kindness (2024), Lanthimos reunited with many actors he previously worked with such as Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Joe Alwyn and new collaborators Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, and Hunter Schafer. Originally titled AND, the film is centered around three separate stories, with the actors playing a different character in each. It premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2024, and was released on 21 June 2024 by Searchlight Pictures.

Lanthimos's films often feature uniquely framed cinematography, deadpan acting, and characters with stilted speech. Lanthimos’s films are known for mixing absurdist dark comedy with violent and sexually explicit content, as well as eccentric world-building in his films with less grounded settings. He has often explored sexually taboo subjects in his films, such as rape and incest. His films are often sociopolitical in nature, and often explore the nature of power and its impact on the people who are vying for, using, or being exploited or influenced by it.

Directed Academy Award performances
Under Lanthimos's direction, these actors have received the Academy Awards nominations and wins for their performances in their respective roles.

• List of Greek Academy Award winners and nominees

• Yorgos Lanthimos by Peter Strickland Bomb
• Yorgos Lanthimos at the Greek Film Centre's website