Ari Aster

Ari Aster (born July 15, 1986) is an American filmmaker. Stylistically, his films are notable for combining horror and dark humor, and for their unsettling and unsparing depictions of graphic violence. He is best known for his feature-length films produced by A24, namely Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023).
Early life
Aster was born into a Jewish family in New York City on July 15, 1986, the son of a poet mother and musician father. He has a younger brother. He recalled seeing his first film, Dick Tracy (1990), when he was four years old. The film featured a scene where Warren Beatty's protagonist fired a tommy gun in front of a wall of fire, allegedly causing Aster to jump from his seat and run "six New York City blocks" while his mother tried to catch him. In his early childhood, Aster's family briefly moved to England, where his father opened a jazz nightclub in Chester. The family returned to the U.S. and settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico when he was 10 years old, where he would spend the remainder of his childhood.
Aster originally had childhood aspirations of becoming an author and became interested in filmmaking through screenwriting; though he would not begin making physical films until college, Ari had written six feature screenplays before graduating from high school. As a child, Aster became obsessed with horror films, frequently renting them from local video stores. He later said, "I just exhausted the horror section of every video store I could find. I didn't know how to assemble people who would cooperate on something like that. I found myself just writing screenplays." In 2004, he enrolled at the College of Santa Fe to study film, where he also was a writer for the Weekly Alibi, a New Mexico-based arts magazine. After graduating in 2008, he was accepted into the 2010 class of fellows at the AFI Conservatory graduate program, where he earned an MFA with a focus in directing.
Career
Aster's debut work was the short film Tale of Two Tims, which he wrote at College of Santa Fe and submitted to the American Film Institute. This earned him a fellowship into the graduate directing program at the AFI Conservatory. He followed this up with several AFI cycle films, along with comedic shorts made with industry friends such as TDF Really Works (2011).
Aster wrote and directed his breakout short film, the psychological horror The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), which follows the members of a suburban family in which the father finds himself trapped in an incestuous relationship with his abusive son. The film was Aster's thesis film while studying at the AFI's graduate school, and later screened at film festivals; it premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah on January 22 before leaking online in November, where it went viral. Ivan Kander of the website Short of the Week wrote that the comments on the film's YouTube page had "everything from effusive acclaim to disgusted vitriol [...] in terms of the internet, that means it's a hit". Aster worked on the film with fellow students from the AFI school. He first conceived the story while discussing taboos with his friends, including the film's star Brandon Greenhouse, before starting his first year at AFI. He wrote and directed five more short films between 2011 and 2018, often teaming with his AFI Conservatory friends Alejandro de Leon and Pawel Pogorzelski, among others.
Aster made his feature-length directorial debut when he wrote and directed the horror-drama film Hereditary (2018), which follows a family haunted by a mysterious presence after the death of their secretive grandmother. The film premiered in the Midnight section at that year's Sundance Film Festival, and was theatrically released in the United States on June 8. It was acclaimed by critics, with Toni Collette's performance receiving particular praise, and was a commercial success; it grossed over $80 million on a $10 million budget, becoming A24's highest-grossing film worldwide. Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone that it was "the scariest film of 2018".
Aster next wrote and directed the folk horror film Midsommar (2019), which was also produced by A24. It follows a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a festival that occurs once every 90 years and find themselves in the clutches of a pagan cult. Midsommar was theatrically released in the United States on July 3. The film received positive reviews from critics, with many praising Aster's direction and Florence Pugh's performance. Aster's original 171-minute cut of the film, which A24 asked him to trim down for a wide theatrical release, had its world premiere at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City as part of its Scary Movies XII lineup on August 20. For his work on the film, Aster received a nomination for Best Screenplay at the 29th Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Aster and producer Lars Knudsen announced in June 2019 that they had launched a new production company called Square Peg. In June 2020, Aster said his next film would be a "nightmare comedy" that lasts for four hours. In February 2021, A24 announced that Aster would write and direct Beau Is Afraid (2023) as its third partnership with him. The film follows an anxiety-fuelled and paranoid middle-aged man who must venture out on a surreal odyssey to attend his mother's funeral. It was originally titled Disappointment Blvd. It was released in theaters on April 21. The film received some favorable reviews but currently out of 63 top critics on the Rotten Tomatoes site, no less than 28 were negative. Some critics and audience members praised Aster's direction and Joaquin Phoenix's performance, but it was not a commercial success as it earned around $10 million at the box office against a budget of $35 million.
In 2021, Aster signed a first-look TV deal with A24. In August 2022, it was announced that Aster would reteam with A24 to produce Kristoffer Borgli's third feature film Dream Scenario, with Nicolas Cage attached to star. The film would be produced by Square Peg, which expanded its slate to include films by Kantemir Balagov, Guy Maddin, Don Hertzfeldt, and Sebastián Silva in 2023, as well as television adaptions of J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World, Nick Drnaso's "Acting Class", and Junji Ito's Uzumaki.
Influences
Aster participated in the 2022 edition of the Sight & Sound film polls, which are held every 10 years to commemorate the greatest films of all time and rank them in order. Directors and critics both give their 10 favorite films of all time for the poll; Aster picked Sansho the Bailiff (1954), Vertigo (1958), 8½ (1963), Persona (1966), Playtime (1967), Barry Lyndon (1975), Raging Bull (1980), Shoah (1985), Songs from the Second Floor (2000), and A Serious Man (2009). However, he also mentioned his belief that "the ranking of art is a fool's errand".
Filmography
Short films
Feature films
Producer
Dream Scenario (2023)
Death of a Unicorn (TBA)
Executive producer
Los Huesos (2021)
El padre bueno (2023)
Awards and nominations
References
Further reading
External links
1986 births
21st-century American male writers
AFI Conservatory alumni
Filmmakers from New York (state)
Horror film directors
Jewish American screenwriters
Jewish American film directors
Living people
Santa Fe University of Art and Design alumni
Screenwriters from New Mexico
Screenwriters from New York (state)
Writers from New Mexico
Writers from New York City
21st-century American screenwriters
21st-century American Jews
Postmodernist filmmakers