James Gray

James Gray was making short films at twelve, found his first job at sixteen in a studio in Queens, where he was born, and shot his first feature at twenty-four. In Little Odessa, Tim Roth plays a Russian-born mob man who comes back to Brighton Beach to carry out a killing; the film is grave enough in places to press down on the viewer, and yet remarkably settled for a director in his middle twenties. His work tells of crime and family conflict inside New York's immigrant world. The Immigrant follows Ewa, a Polish refugee who passes from Ellis Island into the underside of New York in 1921, and in Ad Astra Brad Pitt is an astronaut looking for the scientist father he lost somewhere beyond Neptune. Little Odessa appeared on the Independent Spirit nominee list for first screenplay, and Two Lovers for directing.