Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese's love of cinema began in a cramped flat in the middle of New York's Little Italy. His work passes through the filter of Italian American Catholicism: guilt, responsibility, grace and atonement. They come together in his third feature, Mean Streets, and the streets there are those of Little Italy itself. The same film was the first of nine collaborations with Robert De Niro. Taxi Driver has a man rising against the evil of society, and Raging Bull the real rise and fall of the Italian American middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta. With GoodFellas and Casino the two of them returned directly to the mafia world of Mean Streets. He is known today as a film historian as well, and as one of the leading names in film preservation. At Independent Spirit's 1986 ceremony he shared the directing award for After Hours with Joel Coen, the institution's list putting a tie note beside both names. In 2024 an honorary Golden Bear came to him from the Berlinale.