Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes CBE (born 1 August 1965) is an English film and stage director, producer and screenwriter. In theatre, he is known for his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret (1994), Oliver! (1994), Company (1995), and Gypsy (2003). He directed an original West End stage musical for the first time with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2013).
For directing the play The Ferryman, Mendes was awarded the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 2019.
From Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Fabelmans’ to Viola Davis in ‘The Woman King’: 10 Toronto Movies We’re Dying to See
variety.comCauseway” (A24/Apple Original Films) Though Jennifer Lawrence had a juicy supporting role in Adam McKay’s disaster comedy “Don’t Look Up” last year, we have not seen the former Katniss Everdeen in the driver’s seat of a film since the one-two punch of “Mother!” and “Red Sparrow” (released in 2017 and 2018, respectively).
She returns in earnest at TIFF with “Causeway,” about a soldier with a traumatic brain injury trying to readjust to normal life. — Matt Donnelly “Empire of Light” (Searchlight Pictures)Sam Mendes crafts an ode to the power of movies with this story of a cinema ticket-taker (Olivia Colman) who finds herself drawn to a new employee (Michael Ward).
Colman, who has won an Oscar and scored two other nominations in the last four years, is always arresting, but word is that Ward, so memorable in Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe: Lover’s Rock,” is a revelation.
Plus, the film is a chance to watch as Mendes and his longtime collaborator Roger Deakins (“Skyfall,” “1917”) spin the kind of unforgettable images that demand to be seen on the widest screen possible. — Brent Lang “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures) In this making-of-a-film-director tale, Steven Spielberg goes back to his early days as a movie-obsessed kid in Arizona. “The Fabelmans” is the most personal film yet from the maestro behind “Schindler’s List” and “Jaws,” and it looks to be the hottest ticket at this year’s fest — the first time that Spielberg has premiered one of his films there.
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