Charlotte Wells

Charlotte Wells (born 13 June 1987) is a Scottish director, writer, and producer. She is known for her feature film debut Aftersun (2022), which premiered in 2022 during Critics' Week at Cannes Film Festival, receiving 121 nominations and 33 awards, including Gotham and British Independent Film Awards. Wells has worked on numerous other films, such as Blue Christmas (2017), and her films have screened at festivals worldwide.
Wells was born in Edinburgh. She attended secondary school at the independent George Heriot's School. Wells did not live with her father, who died when she was 16, but remembers him as a very involved parent, despite the living situation. The father-daughter dynamic was a frequent topic of conversation after her first feature-film debut Aftersun, a film about a father and daughter.
Wells was interested in film from a young age, but did not initially pursue it. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Classics from King's College London and a Master of Arts from Oxford University. She went into finance and rediscovered film through helping Callum Just, a school friend, run Digital Orchard, a post-production and DIT agency. She used this experience to apply to New York University's joint business and film graduate program with the intention of becoming a producer. She completed a dual Master of Fine Arts and Master of Business Administration at Tisch School of the Arts and the Stern School.
While at NYU, Wells created three short films: Tuesday (2015), about a 16-year-old learning to cope with a big loss, featuring Megan McGill, which earned Wells the Best Writer Nominee at BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards 2016; Laps (2016), about a normal weekday, until the main character is sexually assaulted on the New York subway, featuring Thea Brooks, which earned Wells Special Jury Recognition at the SXSW Short Film Awards and Special Jury Award for Editing at Sundance 2017; and Blue Christmas (2017), about a debt collector who goes to work instead of seeing his wife on Christmas Eve to avoid her worsening psychosis, featuring Jamie Robson and Michelle Duncan. Within these short films as well as Aftersun, Wells shows her ability to display and explore extremely emotional complex characters. While Aftersun (2022), explores a father struggling with depression, Laps (2016), addresses complex and sensitive subjects with a thoughtful and nuanced approach.
Before starting her career in the film industry as a producer, Wells helped run Digital Orchard, a company specializing in film, finishing images, developing film and digital imaging. Wells was a fellow at the 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs with her feature film debut Aftersun, which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim. The film is a drama starring Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio. She received many accolades as a breakthrough director and appeared on numerous year-end lists. Aftersun received an Academy Award nomination for Paul Mescal's performance.
Aftersun is a coming-of-age film that tells the story of a young woman, Sophie, recalling a holiday she took with her father, Calum (Paul Mescal), 20 years earlier, for Calum's 31st birthday. The 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) does not spend much time with her father, but they have their annual vacation together. The time they spend on this holiday is precious to them. They go to a Turkish budget resort and each desperately want to bond and connect with one another, but throughout the film we see Calum struggling with depression which creates a barrier between their bond. Adult Sophie tries to remember her father by looking back on this holiday and piece together her memories with the help of the videos they took on the vacation. Told from Adult Sophie's perspective, this film explores the theme of memory and the struggle to understand who your parents really are at a young age. It highlights the growing disconnect in family relationships as the child realizes how little they truly knew.
The film is shot on 35mm film and partly by the actors themselves on a MiniDV camera. This camera is used for many of the scenes with Sophie during the holiday, including playing with friends at the resort and spending time with her father. The 35mm footage is spread throughout the film to intimately depict the father-daughter dynamic from Sophie's perspective. The shots within the film enhance this feeling of separation between father and daughter, Wells uses lighting to show this. There's cool dark lighting when Calum is struggling, and warm lighting for young Sophie, exploring her innocence and ignorance. Adult Sophie is, as she was when she was young, slowly figuring out who her father was as a person, not just a father.
As deep, moving and personal this movie is, it sparked conversation about Wells' personal life. Her father died when she was 16 and she lived apart from him, though she did not feel that he was uninvolved with her upbringing. The father-daughter dynamic was not something Wells was initially trying to uncover in the film, but rather arose during its making, specifically during the screenwriting. The first goal was to show how a relationship can shift over time. She has mentioned that the narrative is "very much fiction, but rooted in experience and memory," allowing her personal memories and anecdotes to shape the story. Aftersun received 121 nominations, and 33 awards, including the British Independent Film Award for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Wells.As well as a nomination for Best Actor at the 2023 Academy Awards for Mescal's performance. The National Board of Review named the film the Best Directorial Debut of 2022. In addition, to all the film successes, Wells also personally received Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award at the Gotham Awards and the Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer at the BAFTA Awards.