Justin Dallas Kurzel (; born 1974) is an Australian film director and screenwriter.

Early life

Kurzel was born 1974 in Gawler, South Australia to a family of immigrant roots, his father hailing from Poland and his mother from Malta. His younger brother,

Jed Kurzel Jed Danyel Kurzel (born 1976) is an Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist and film composer. He is a founding member of The Mess Hall (from 2001), a blues rock duo. His older brother Justin Kurzel is a film director and screenwriter. Life a ...

, is a

blues rock Blues rock is a fusion music genre that combines elements of blues and rock music. It is mostly an electric ensemble-style music with instrumentation similar to electric blues and rock (electric guitar, electric bass guitar, and drums, sometimes w ...

musician who has scored most of Justin's films.

Career

In 1999 he was awarded a Mike Walsh Fellowship. His film debut was the Australian short film ''Blue Tongue'' (2004). His feature film debut was ''

Snowtown Snowtown is a town located in the Mid North of South Australia 145 km (90 miles) north of Adelaide and lies on the main road and rail routes between Adelaide and Perth – the Augusta Highway and Adelaide-Port Augusta railway line. Th ...

'' (2011), for which he won the AACTA Award for Best Direction. Though controversial for its violence, the film was generally praised and holds an 84% on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

with the critic consensus: "It's a bleak and brutal endurance test, but for viewers with the strength and patience to make it to the end, Snowtown will prove an uncommonly powerful viewing experience." His 2015 film adaptation of

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

's ''

Macbeth ''Macbeth'' (, full title ''The Tragedie of Macbeth'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those w ...

'' was selected to compete for the

Palme d'Or The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...

at the

2015 Cannes Film Festival The 68th Cannes Film Festival was held from 13 to 24 May 2015. Joel and Ethan Coen were the Presidents of the Jury for the main competition. It was the first time that two people chaired the jury. Since the Coen brothers each received a separate ...

. In 2016, Kurzel directed ''

Assassin's Creed ''Assassin's Creed'' is an open-world, action-adventure, and stealth game franchise published by Ubisoft and developed mainly by its studio Ubisoft Montreal using the game engine Anvil and its more advanced derivatives. Created by Patrice D ...

'' (2016), based on the video game franchise of the same name. Kurzel directed '' True History of the Kelly Gang'' in 2018, adapted from Peter Carey's 2001

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. ...

-winning novel of the same name, written from the viewpoint of legendary Australian

bushranger Bushrangers were originally escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who used the bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. By the 1820s, the term had evolved to refer to those who took up " robbery unde ...

and

outlaw An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill th ...

Ned Kelly. The film premiered at the 2019

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

and was released in Australian cinemas in 2020. Kurzel will direct multiple episodes of Apple TV's television adaptation of the 2003 novel '' Shantaram''.

Personal life

Kurzel is married to actress Essie Davis. They have twin daughters.

Filmography

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kurzel, Justin 1974 births Living people Australian film directors Australian people of Maltese descent Australian people of Polish descent Australian screenwriters People from Gawler, South Australia