Lynne RAMSAY

Lynne Ramsay is one of the brightest talents to have appeared in recent British cinema. She was born in Glasgow, Scotland on 5 December 1969 and studied photography at Napier College in Edinburgh. At the National Film and Television School she specialised in cinematography and directing, graduating in 1996. She began her career making short films including Small Deaths (1996), her graduation film, and Gasman (1997), both of which won prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Her debut feature film, Ratcatcher (1999), clearly belongs in the tradition of British social realism, but like the work of her fellow Scot Bill DOUGLAS it transcends the limitations of naturalism to offer something more visually poetic. Set during the strike-ravaged 1970s, it presents a wholly unsentimental picture of the life of a young boy growing up on a grim housing estate in Glasgow. Its political message remains implicit as it is as much concerned with conveying the subjective experience of young James as recording the external realities of his life. Her achievement was recognised with the Carl Foreman Award as most promising newcomer at the BAFTAs.

Her second feature film, Morvern Callar (2002), adapted from Alan Warner's successful novel, again immerses us in the inner world of its central character, a supermarket worker who passes off her dead boyfriend's unpublished novel as her own and heads off to Spain with her friend on the proceeds.