Ari Aster
아리 애스터･アリ・アスター
Ari Aster (born July 15, 1986) is an American filmmaker. Having garnered some initial recognition for the short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), he became best known for writing and directing Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023), all of which were released by A24. His films have been noted for their unsettling combination of horror, dark comedy, and depictions of graphic violence. In 2018, he co-founded the production company Square Peg with Danish producer Lars Knudsen.
| Known for | Directing |
|---|---|
| Born | 15 Jul 1986 |
| Place of birth | New York City, New York, USA |
Favorite films
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I could include any number of Fellini’s films, especially La strada, La dolce vita, I vitelloni, and Amarcord. But 8½ is his most perfect while also being his most freewheeling and untethered. I watch this film before I make anything. It’s so alive!
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This is such a fascinating trilogy about a boy who has cursed his family and brings death and destruction to everybody he loves — or at least it feels that way. Of course it’s about a million other things, and in the end it’s about everything.
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I’m always thinking about the Powell and Pressburger films when I’m thinking about color, about creating worlds, and about how to tell a story as exuberantly as possible.
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I love all of Bergman’s films, but his later period has had the biggest impact on me, starting with Persona. … I know that he wrote it when he was in the hospital and thought he was going to die. It adopts a dream logic in a really forward-thinking way.
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I just fell in love with Mizoguchi’s work. He called the Academy ratio the “painterly ratio,” and I feel like there are very few filmmakers who did as much with that frame. … Ugetsu is a beautiful, ethereal ghost story.
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Cries and Whispers strikes me as the most painful and beautiful film about death … and sisterhood.
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Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby play with genre so brilliantly, upending conventions while honoring them.
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This is such a fascinating trilogy about a boy who has cursed his family and brings death and destruction to everybody he loves — or at least it feels that way. Of course it’s about a million other things, and in the end it’s about everything.
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This is such a fascinating trilogy about a boy who has cursed his family and brings death and destruction to everybody he loves — or at least it feels that way. Of course it’s about a million other things, and in the end it’s about everything.
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Macbeth always struck me as one of his masterpieces, and it’s clearly haunted by the Manson murders in a very visceral way.
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Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby play with genre so brilliantly, upending conventions while honoring them.
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Cul-de-sac is like his existential Beckett movie, and it draws a lot from absurd theater.
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Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher must be my favorite female performance. I saw this with my mom at the theater when I was about fourteen or fifteen and we both loved it so much. I remember thinking, I want to make movies like that.
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A Brighter Summer Day is just an amazing gangland epic. I don’t know how you watch it without becoming convinced that you’re watching the greatest movie ever made.
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All of the stories being told in Yi Yi are kind of unremarkable — it’s the telling that is so remarkable.
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I’m always thinking about the Powell and Pressburger films when I’m thinking about color, about creating worlds, and about how to tell a story as exuberantly as possible.
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I’m always thinking about the Powell and Pressburger films when I’m thinking about color, about creating worlds, and about how to tell a story as exuberantly as possible.
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I’m always thinking about the Powell and Pressburger films when I’m thinking about color, about creating worlds, and about how to tell a story as exuberantly as possible.
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I’m always thinking about the Powell and Pressburger films when I’m thinking about color, about creating worlds, and about how to tell a story as exuberantly as possible.
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David Thewlis’s performance is my favorite male performance ever. There’s nothing like it. It’s a bleak film, but it’s so filled with life and passion and it’s so funny.
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Topsy-Turvy is perhaps the most generous period piece I’ve ever seen. It is so funny and so filled with period detail and so clearly a film that doesn’t want to stop. It’s purely anecdotal; there’s no real plot. It’s structured around the writing of The Mikado, but really it’s just about the period, and every scene is so rich.
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I think the last shot of 45 Years is one of the all-time great shots — I feel confident in saying that even though it just came out a few years ago.
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The Age of Innocence has always been one of my favorite Scorsese films — it’s one of the most painfully beautiful unrequited love stories ever.
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Sansho the Bailiff is just one of the most devastating melodramas I’ve ever seen.
