Terrence Malick

Terrence Frederick Malick (born November 30, 1943) is an American filmmaker. Malick began his career as part of the New Hollywood generation of filmmakers and received numerous accolades, including the Palme d'Or and the Golden Bear, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a DGA Award, and a WGA Award.

Malick made his feature film debut with the crime drama Badlands (1973), followed by the romantic period drama Days of Heaven (1978), which earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director. He then directed the World War II epic The Thin Red Line (1998), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, the historical romantic drama The New World (2005), and the experimental coming-of-age drama The Tree of Life (2011), for which he was again nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and won the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or.

After The Tree of Life, Malick's directorial output in the 2010s became more consistent and experimental with To the Wonder (2013), Knight of Cups (2015), Song to Song (2017), and A Hidden Life (2019). During this time he also directed the documentary film Voyage of Time (2016) about the birth and death of the universe. Malick has frequently collaborated with Emmanuel Lubezki, who served as the director of photography on five of his films.

Malick's films explore themes such as transcendence and conflicts between reason and instinct. They typically have broad philosophical and spiritual overtones and employ meditative voice-overs by their characters. Malick's style has polarized scholars and audiences; many praise his films for their lavish cinematography and aesthetics, but others fault them for lacking plot and character development. His work has nonetheless ranked highly in retrospective decade-end and all-time polls.