Kelly Reichardt

American minimalism at the economic margin. Reichardt's films follow people whose plans are small and whose margin for error is zero — a lost dog, a failed crossing, a favour that cannot be repaid. The Pacific Northwest recurs as a landscape indifferent to the people crossing it.

Signature

• Duration as meaning: tasks shown in full, at their real cost.
• Plot pressure supplied by money and weather rather than antagonists.
• Male friendship examined for what it fails to provide.
• Endings that withhold resolution and simply stop.

Distinguish from

Shares Survival with thrillers, but nothing is adventurous — the threat is a bus fare, a broken car, an unpaid wage. All nine catalogue films are arthouse, predominantly contemplative.

Films here also carry Moral Ambiguity, Loneliness & Isolation, Survival, Midlife Crisis, Immigrant Experience.