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Portrait of Andrea Arnold

Film · British & Irish

Andrea Arnold

born 1961 · British

British social realism, shot handheld in Academy ratio

Andrea Arnold began as a dancer and children's television presenter, went to film school in her thirties, and won an Academy Award with her third short. Her features follow girls and young women on the edge of estates, caravan parks and motorways, shot handheld in the boxy 1.37:1 frame, on real locations, often with performers found in the street. She has won the Jury Prize at Cannes three times, more than any other director.

How to spot them

  • ▸The near-square Academy ratio, 1.37:1, held tight on a face, with natural light
  • ▸Hand-held camera at the character's shoulder; almost no score, and a great deal of ambient sound
  • ▸Non-professionals cast from streets, stations and car parks, opposite one established actor
  • ▸Birds, horses, insects and weather cut in as breathing space between scenes
  • ▸Cinematographer Robbie Ryan on almost everything

Key films

Four hungry children are left outside a pub while their mother goes in with a man, and a wasp crawls towards the baby's mouth (2003)

Wasp — the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

A Glasgow CCTV operator spots a man on her monitors whom she has every reason to hate (2006)

Red Road — her feature debut, the Jury Prize at Cannes, part of the Advance Party project.

A furious fifteen-year-old dancer on an Essex estate is drawn to her mother's new boyfriend (2009)

Fish Tank — the Jury Prize at Cannes, with Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender.

A teenager joins a van of young magazine sellers crossing the Midwest, led by a man with a rat's tail (2016)

American Honey — the Jury Prize at Cannes, with Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf.

A documentary that stays with one dairy animal, at eye level, through two calvings and her last morning (2021)

Cow — filmed on a Kent farm over four years; the subject is a Holstein called Luma.

A twelve-year-old in a squat above Gravesend meets a strange barefoot man in a kilt looking for his parents (2024)

Bird — Nykiya Adams, Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski.

Key ideas

  • The boxed-in Academy frame as a statement about restricted lives
  • Casting for truth, not craft — the face has to have lived the part
  • Animals and weather given equal attention to people, as fellow inhabitants of the same frame

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born in Dartford on 5 April 1961, the eldest of four; her mother was sixteen when she was born
  • •She worked as a dancer and, in the 1980s, as a presenter on the Children's ITV series No. 73 before turning to directing
  • •She trained at the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles
  • •Wasp (2003) won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2005
  • •She has won the Jury Prize at Cannes three times, for Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey — a record
  • •Her 2011 adaptation of a Yorkshire moorland novel cast a black actor as its foundling hero and used no score at all
  • •She has directed episodes of Transparent, I Love Dick and the second series of Big Little Lies, where her cut was reworked by the production
  • •Cow (2021) is her only documentary feature; she followed the same animal for four years
  • •She was appointed OBE in 2011, and her most recent feature is Bird (2024)

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources