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Alex Garland

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Alex Garland
Alex Garland is an English novelist, screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is known for authoring the novel ‘The Beach,’ based on his own travels across Europe and the Philippines. He is also famous for his screenwriting in the movies ‘28 Days Later’, ‘Never Let Me Go’, ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Dredd’. As a director, he is best known for directing ‘Ex Machina’, a fiction thriller flick that earned him three BIFA awards for Best Screenplay, Best British Independent Film, and Best Director. He also received an Academy Award nomination along with other accolades. Garland also serves as a writer for video games. The popular game ‘Enslaved: Odyssey to the West’ designed for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 showcases his impeccable writing skills. He is a graduate of the University of Manchester. He loves writing about Manila where he spent his teenage years. Garland has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2016. Talking of his personal life, he is married to actress Paloma Baeza and is the doting father of two children. He resides with his family in England, the UK.
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Born
May 26, 1970
Birth Place
London
Nationality
British
Sun Sign
Gemini
Also Known As
Alexander Medawar Garland
Famous As
Novelist, Screenwriter, Film Director
Height
6'1" (185 cm)
Education
University of Manchester(B.A., History of Art)
Father
Nicholas Garland
Mother
Caroline Medawar Garland
Spouse(s)
Paloma Baeza
Children
Eva Garland, Milo Garland
Relative(s)
Peter Medawar (maternal grandfather) Jean Medawar (maternal grandmother)
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WWEEK

What to Stream This Week: Did Alex Garland Secretly Direct “Dredd”?

The world wasn’t ready for the sumptuous and surreal PDX romance The Texture of Falling when it debuted in 2018. Now that the feature directorial debut of Maria Allred (who was profiled in WW’s Filmmaker Issue last week) is streaming, it’s time for it to be discovered by an audience open to its enveloping exploration of passion, submission and creation. Amazon Prime, Roku, Tubi.
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Nobody Makes Films Like Alex Garland. But He Might Stop Making Them.

Alex Garland knows that calling his new film “Men” is a provocative act. “It’s quite interesting that such a short, simple word can be so freighted with massive and entirely subjective meanings,” he said. As a writer and filmmaker, Garland is drawn to subjects that...
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Picture for Nobody Makes Films Like Alex Garland. But He Might Stop Making Them.
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/Film

Men Director Alex Garland Thinks All His Films Are 'Surrealist'

Director Alex Garland is venturing into the genre of folk horror for the first time with his 2022 film "Men." The highly anticipated project is a new direction for the filmmaker but will still bear many tonal similarities to his acclaimed sci-fi films, "Ex Machina" (2014) and "Annihilation" (2018). "Men"...
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/Film

Men Director Alex Garland Doesn't Like To Make Obvious Winks And Nods To His Inspirations

Every great filmmaker will take inspiration from those who came before them. Quentin Tarantino serves as a great example of someone who is clearly inspired by the work of many artists, yet uses lessons of other masters of cinema to make something that feels entirely unique. Alex Garland, who film lovers likely know from his directorial efforts "Ex Machina" and "Annihilation," is very much a man who has built one heck of an identity as a filmmaker. Garland is making his welcome return to the big screen with a new movie, "Men," which hits theaters later this month. But as much as he may be influenced by previous movies and the filmmakers behind them, he is very much not a fan of directly referencing other works in his films.
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/Film

Men Director Alex Garland Teases His Next War Movie, Calls It 'Pure Surrealism'

The latest Alex Garland-directed film, "Men," is hitting theaters in the U.S. and the U.K. very shortly. The reactions are wildly positive so far, though I'm doing my very best to stay away from any spoilers. If you're doing the same, the simple synopsis is that a young woman (Jessie Buckley) goes on a holiday by herself in the English countryside after the death of her husband. I don't want to know anything else and you probably don't either.
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/Film

There Is No Longer Director's Cut Of Men, Alex Garland Says

Spring is here, the weather is finally heating up again, and those of us suffering from a little cabin fever during the dreary winter months can look forward to getting some fresh air again. But the real boon of this time of year, of course, comes from the fact that we're about to get another Alex Garland movie. "Men" stars Jessie Buckley and comes with the added wrinkle of a whole assortment of Rory Kinnears, all put on this Earth seemingly to plague our grieving and traumatized main character specifically. Honestly, relatable. Who among us hasn't found ourselves in a similar position?
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The Atlantic

Alex Garland Knows You Might Hate Men

Alex Garland has never shied away from unusual endings. His 2018 sci-fi film, Annihilation, adapted a mind-bending best seller and put a poetic spin on its final showdown, in which Natalie Portman performs a balletic fight with an alien copy of herself. Then he made the TV show Devs, an inscrutable tech thriller whose conclusion unfolded over multiple parallel universes. So it’s quite telling that the writer-director seems nervous about the last act of his new horror film, Men, which will be released in theaters next week. “Sometimes I think, Oh God, I dug myself in some weird conceit hole,” Garland told me. But he added that, as a storyteller, he felt an obligation to push boundaries: “I get scared of not taking the chance that someone else is giving you, you know?”
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The Guardian

Men review – Alex Garland unleashes multiple Rory Kinnears in wacky folk-horror

The grim accusation about men – the one about them being all alike – might occur to you during this film, along perhaps with the shrill defensive hashtag #notallmen. It is an unsubtle and schematic but very well-acted Brit folk-horror pastiche from the writer-director Alex Garland; it feels like a reverse-engineered version of The League of Gentlemen, with the overt comic intention concealed or denied. For me, the film never quite addresses the obvious dramatic implications of its startling central conceit: the wacky multirole casting of Rory Kinnear. But there’s undoubtedly something unnerving and outrageous in Kinnear’s performances, with the wigs and false teeth, like a scary-movie remake of The Dick Emery Show.
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/Film

Alex Garland Isn't Annihilation's Only Connection To Men

"Men," as with "Annihilation," begins with a woman in turmoil. Jessie Buckley stars as Harper Marlowe, a young widow who rents a secluded house in the English countryside after the death of her husband James (Paapa Essiedu). Through flashbacks similar to those in "Annihilation," the film explores Harper's life with James in London leading up to his tragic demise. Much like the laws of nature start to break down in the Shimmer, "Men" takes a hard right into the surreal when Harper goes on holiday. Every man she meets in a nearby village has the same face as Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), the owner of the house where she's staying. And that's when things get really strange.
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EW.com

Alex Garland explains why his new horror film Men is more 'gut-level' than Ex Machina

According to Alex Garland himself, there are two types of Alex Garland films. One involves stories that are slower, more cerebral, primarily concerned with big scientific questions: think Garland's 2014 directorial debut Ex Machina or his recent FX miniseries Devs. On the other end of his artistic spectrum, there are the movies that their own creator describes as "aggressive," more interested in images and sensations than ideas.
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IndieWire

Alex Garland Warns ‘Men’ Is Not an ‘Intellectual’ Film Like ‘Ex Machina,’ More ‘Aggressive’

Click here to read the full article. Boys will be boys and men will be “Men,” and according to writer-director Alex Garland, there’s no escaping that fact. The upcoming A24 film and Garland’s third feature is “a horror movie about a sense of horror,” or, more simply, “a ghost story,” as the director described to Entertainment Weekly. Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley stars as Harper, a young widow who has rented an isolated holiday home in the English countryside following the death of her husband (Paapa Essiedu). However, the innkeeper (Rory Kinnear) warns Harper against biting into the “forbidden fruit” on the property,...
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