Yorgos Lanthimos

Absurd rules obeyed with a straight face. Lanthimos invents a closed system — a family that never leaves the house, a hotel that turns the single into animals, a court run on cruelty — and films the people inside it behaving as though it were normal. The comedy and the cruelty are the same thing, delivered flat.

Signature

• Self-contained worlds run on one arbitrary, absurd rule.
• Deadpan, affectless performance holding comedy and horror together.
• Bodies and desire treated clinically (Dogtooth, The Lobster, Poor Things).
• Period dress turned strange by wide lenses and cold light (The Favourite).