Peter Strickland | |
|---|---|
 Peter Strickland in September 2018 | |
| Born | 21 May 1973 Reading, Berkshire, England |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1996–present |
Peter Strickland is a British film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his films Berberian Sound Studio (2012), The Duke of Burgundy (2014) and In Fabric (2018).
Strickland was born to a Greek mother and British father, both teachers, and grew up in Reading, Berkshire, where he was a member of Progress Theatre, directing his own adaptation of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.[1] In 1997, his short film Bubblegum was entered in the Berlin Film Festival.[2] He made a short version of what would become Berberian Sound Studio in 2005.[3] For most of the 2000s, he lived in Slovakia and Hungary.[4]
His first feature, the low-budget rural revenge drama Katalin Varga, was financed by an inheritance from an uncle and filmed in Romania over a period of 17 days in 2006.[2][4] It won the European Film Award for European Discovery of the Year in 2009.[5]
His second, Berberian Sound Studio, is a psychological thriller set in a 1970s Italian horror film studio and starring Toby Jones.[6] It was previewed at London FrightFest Film Festival in August 2012[3] and at the 2012 Edinburgh International Film Festival, where Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph described it as the "stand-out movie".[7] In 2013, the film obtained the Best International Film Award at BAFICI.[8] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described Berberian Sound Studio as marking Strickland's emergence as "a key British film-maker of his generation".[9]
His third feature, the chamber drama The Duke of Burgundy, was an homage to Jess Franco starring Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara D'Anna.[10] It received overwhelming praise from critics, and appeared on The A.V. Club and Indiewire best film lists for 2015.[11][12]
In 2018, Strickland released In Fabric, a psychological horror film about a haunted dress purchased in a London department store. Like his previous film, it received universal critical acclaim. It appeared in multiple best of the year critics' polls, including those of The Playlist and Sight & Sound.[13][14]
