Todd Haynes

Passionate about the visual arts since childhood, Todd Haynes studied art and semiotics at Brown University. In 1987, he made the medium-length film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story with Barbie dolls. Since then, he has tirelessly continued to address questions of gender and identity. His first feature film Poison (1991), inspired by the work of Jean Genet, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. After Safe (1995), which revealed Julianne Moore, he conjured David Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust period in Velvet Goldmine (1998), then paid homage to Douglas Sirk with Far from Heaven (2002). In 2006, Haynes had six actors play Bob Dylan in I’m Not There. He went on to direct the mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011) before returning to film with Carol (2015). He then directed Wonderstruck (2017), which had its premiere in the Official Competition at the Festival de Cannes, followed by Dark Waters (2019), with Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, his award-winning music documentary The Velvet Underground (2021), and his most recent release, May December (2023), with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, which also premiered in competition at Cannes.