page_title: Lynne Ramsay
section_title: Critical response
hierarchical_section_title: Lynne Ramsay / Critical response
caption_attribution_description: English: The main competition jury at the Cannes film festival
context_page_description: Lynne Ramsay is a Scottish film director, writer, producer, and cinematographer best known for the feature films Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and You Were Never Really Here.
  Her films are marked by a fascination with children and young people and the recurring themes of grief, guilt, death, and its aftermath. They are low on dialogue and explicit story exposition, and instead use images, vivid details, music, and sound design to create their worlds. In April 2013 she was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. In 2015, she was named as a member of the jury for the main competition at the 2015 Venice Film Festival.
context_section_description: In 2007 Ramsay was rated number 12 in Guardian Unlimited's list of the world's 40 best directors working at that time.
  Sean O'Hagan wrote in The Guardian that "Ramsay is entertaining company, whether talking about the art films she loves —by Bergman, Cassavetes, Fassbinder— or railing against the 'bullshitters and backstabbers' of the film industry."
  The Harvard Film Archive describes Ramsay as "an uncompromising filmmaker fascinated by the tremendous power of cinema to appeal directly to the senses and awaken new depths in our audio-visual imagination. Immersive and at times almost overwhelming, Ramsay's films abound with uncommon imagery arresting for its remarkable use of texture, composition, color, music and sound."
  In her The New York Times biography, Ramsay's work is described as having a "gritty, realistic visual style that demands attention."
  Tilda Swinton, whom Ramsay directed in We Need To Talk About Kevin, called her "the real McCoy", saying, "She is one of those rare directors who creates the kind of films that just would not be there if she didn't make them."
  British film critic Jonathan Romney, when speaking on We Need To Talk About Kevin, opined "Ramsay, thinks not in concepts but in images. She doesn't make intellectual films, but ones that are close to music, taking visuals to the point of abstraction."
  Los Angeles Times columnist Mark Olsen considered Ramsay "one of the leading lights of young British cinema", describing her additionally as "among the most celebrated British filmmakers of her generation."
caption: Cannes Jury including Ramsay
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