Question: What do ‘Locke’, ‘Under the Skin’, ‘Ex Machina’, ‘The Lobster’, ‘Room’, ‘The Witch’, ‘Moonlight’, ‘It Comes At Night’, ‘The Florida Project’, ‘The Disaster Artist’ and ‘Lady Bird’ have in common?
Let’s start with the blindingly obvious – they are some of the most outstanding works of cinema in recent years. As much as I hate to justify this view by means of Rotten Tomatoes, one cannot look past the fact that, among these films, the average score for these stands at a remarkable 92%; which is the same score, coincidentally, as that of ‘The Shape of Water’, which recently won the Best Picture at the Academy Awards.
What is not so obvious, then, is what else unites them other than the fact I love each and every one of them. It is not a director; or an actor, cinematographer, writer, or, in fact, any single individual. It is, instead, a production and distribution company – a corporate component of the film-making equation not often discussed beyond #MeToo, – by the name of A24.
Founded in 2012 by a trio of friends with nostalgia for the Miramax-led indie cinema boom of the ‘90s, A24’s films have since earned twenty-four nominations at the Academy Awards, with ‘Moonlight’ garnering the company their first (of many, one would think) Best Picture award, in 2017.
One of the distinguishing features of A24 is that their headquarters are in Manhattan – not in L.A., – and therefore, literally embody the role of outsider to the elite-dominated Hollywood fantasy that characterises the contrarian originality of their films. The portrait that emerges from interviews with directors and actors on their experience with the company is a laissez-faire environment that does not stifle the creativity needed to push the boundaries of cinema.
From their early days, – of course, they remain, for all their successes, a very young company, – they demonstrated their ground-breaking intent. They backed complete unknowns in Jonathan Glazer and Robert Eggers for ‘Under the Skin’ (2014) and ‘The Witch’ (2015) respectively, and which, by all accounts, have revitalised a horror scene maligned by the jump-scare-athons of the Insidiouses (Insidii, anyone?).
The more established directorial likes of Denis Villeneuve (‘Blade Runner 2049’, ‘Arrival’), Lenny Abrahamson (‘Frank’), and Sofia Coppola (‘Lost in Translation’) have also collaborated with the company, and spoken highly of their relaxed, ‘un-corporate’ approach in direct contrast to mainstream Hollywood.
Undeniably, though, their single greatest triumph thus far is ‘Moonlight’ (2016), which to me, was in many ways the logical culmination of a narrative of a production company irreverent of toxic Hollywood standards of what we should see on the big screen. Exercising production, as well as distribution, rights for the first time, ‘Moonlight’ became – almost unsurprisingly, but much to my delight, – the first film based on a LGBT story and with an all-black cast to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Mahershala Ali the first Muslim to win an acting Oscar.
In this post-Weinstein, #MeToo epoch of film-making, when we rethink and reform the way in which films are made, and work to ensure that all stories – not just of the Hollywood reach, – are told on our screens, we as audiences must support those who are leading the charge. So, in my final article for Part B this year (it has been wonderful procrastination), I say, bravo A24, and may the stories of the little people continue to make it big.
