“I'll never forget watching 'I'm Not There' with Cate Blanchett, because it was the first time she saw the finished film and saw her performance in it. I was sitting next to her experiencing it vicariously through her fresh eyes and hoping she liked it.”

American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Todd Haynes is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. Working across four decades, he is known for films that engage melodrama, historical pastiche, and queer cinema. His work often examines the emotional and psychological effects of social repression, especially around sexuality, identity, illness, and conformity. He is also associated with the New Queer Cinema movement of the early 1990s, and is noted for reworking classical Hollywood forms, including the woman’s picture and the biopic, to explore marginalized experience and unspoken desire.