Todd Haynes

Todd Haynes is an openly gay American filmmaker whose work is defined by a rigorous engagement with film history, female interiority, and the politics of sexuality. His debut feature Poison (1991), a triptych inspired by Jean Genet, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and attracted controversy when religious groups objected to its NEA funding — an early skirmish of the culture wars. His subsequent films include Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998, a glam-rock queer fantasia), Far from Heaven (2002, a Sirkian melodrama about a closeted man and his wife), I'm Not There (2007, a fractured Bob Dylan biopic with six actors playing the same character), Mildred Pierce (HBO, 2011), and Carol (2015), an exquisite adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's lesbian romance that earned six Academy Award nominations. Haynes is one of the most critically lauded American directors of his generation and a central figure of the New Queer Cinema movement.