Who is Academy Award Nominee Roland Joffé?

Roland Joffé, director of upcoming GlobalWatch Films movie The Great Hunger, has had a successful and varied career. Find out more about the movies he has directed below!

Photos Copyright Goldcrest Films International

The Killing Fields (1984)

  • Roland’s first feature film gained him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
  • The film also won three Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Haing S. Ngor, Best Cinematography for Chris Menges, and Best Film Editing for Jim Clark.
  • A further three nominations for the Academy Awards were Best Actor in a leading role for Sam Waterston, Best Picture for David Puttnam, and Best Writing, Screenplay based on material from another medium for Bruce Robinson.
  • The film starred Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor along with John Malkovich, Julian Sands and Craig T. Nelson.
  • The Killing Fields is about a journalist trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot’s bloody ‘Year Zero’ cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million ‘undesirable’ civilians.
  • The film also won 8 BAFTAs and 5 additional BAFTA nominations.
Photos Copyright Warner Bros.

The Mission (1986)

  • The Mission gained Roland his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
  • Chris Menges won his second Academy Award for Best Cinematography for The Mission.
  • The film was nominated for 5 additional Academy Award nominations, including Best Music, Original Score for Ennio Morricone.
  • The Mission won 3 BAFTAs and was nominated for an additional 8.
  • Roland won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival as well as the Technical Grand Prize for this film.
  • The film had an all star cast including Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Cherie Lunghi and Ronald Pickup.
  • The Mission follows Eighteenth-century Spanish Jesuits who try to protect a remote South American tribe in danger of falling under the rule of pro-slavery Portugal.
Photos Copyright Allied Stars Ltd.

The Scarlet Letter (1995)

  • Roland directed this adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel of the same name.
  • The Scarlet Letter starred Demi Moore, Gary Oldman, and Robert Duvall.
  • Gary Oldman considers this movie as one of his favourite projects.
  • The film was scored by John Barry, who also composed the music for Zulu, Goldfinger and 11 more James Bond films among many other great films.
  • The Scarlet Letter is about an affair between a young woman and a pastor that has disastrous consequences.
Photos Copyright Antena 3 Films

There Be Dragons (2011)

  • Roland received a nomination for the Golden Goblet at the Shanghai International Film Festival for this film.
  • Roland also produced the film, which was called a ‘religious epic’ by The New York Times.
  • The film had an all star cast including Charlie Cox, Wes Bentley, Dougray Scott, Golshifteh Farahani, Olga Kurylenko, Rodrigo Santoro and Derek Jacobi.
  • Logline: Arising out of the horror of the Spanish Civil War, a candidate for canonisation is investigated by a journalist who discovers his own estranged father had a deep, dark and devastating connection to the saint’s life.
Photos Copyright Light and Dark Films

The Forgiven (2017)

  • The Forgiven is Roland’s most recent feature film.
  • Roland co-wrote the script with Michael Ashton, based on Ashton’s play The Archbishop and the Antichrist.
  • The film premiered at the London Film Festival.
  • The Forgiven stars Forest Whitaker and Eric Bana as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the fictional Piet Blomfeld respectively.
  • Logline: After the end of Apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu meets with a brutal murderer seeking redemption.
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