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.
It goes without saying that some of the world’s foremost filmmakers were swept up in personal nostalgia during the stay-at-home period of the pandemic.
Kenneth Branagh crafted Best Picture nominee “Belfast,” Steven Spielberg revisited his youth in “The Fablemans” and Alejandro Inarritu had something of an existential crisis with “Bardo.” It appears the world’s English-speaking critics have had enough after the recent response to Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light.” READ MORE: Olivia Colman is heartbreaking in Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light” [Telluride Review] Set in 1981, “Light” centers on Hillary (Olivia Colman), a lonely middle aged movie theater employee who is keeping her bipolar disorder secret from her colleagues.
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