Yorgos Lanthimos

He rose to prominence directing the psychological drama film Dogtooth (2009), which won the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Lanthimos transitioned to making English-language films with the black comedy The Lobster (2015), which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and the psychological horror film The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). Lanthimos is a frequent collaborator of actress Emma Stone, including the films The Favourite (2018), Poor Things (2023), Kinds of Kindness (2024) and Bugonia (2025). He received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture for The Favourite and Poor Things, in addition to winning the Golden Lion for the latter.

Yorgos Lanthimos studied at Hellenic Cinema and Television School Stavrakos and Moraitis School. The recorded working language is Modern Greek. The field of work recorded is film direction, film screenwriting and film production. Works named in the authority record are Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite, Poor Things and Bleat. Distinctions recorded are European Film Award for Best Screenwriter, European Film Award for Best Film, European Film Award for Best Comedy and European Film Award for Best Director.

• Name — Yorgos Lanthimos • Birth Name — Giorgos Lanthimos • Native Name — Γιώργος Λάνθιμος • Born — 23 September 1973 • Birthplace — Athens, Greece • Occupation — * Director • screenwriter • producer • Years Active — 1995–present • Awards — Full list

Lanthimos was born in the Pagrati neighbourhood of Athens on 23 September 1973, the son of shop owner Eirini and basketball player Antonis Lanthimos. His father played for Pagrati BC and the Greek national basketball team, later serving as a basketball instructor at the Moraitis School. Lanthimos was primarily raised by his mother. After completing his education at the Moraitis School, he studied business administration. He also followed his father into playing basketball for Pagrati BC, before eventually quitting playing.

During the 1990s, Lanthimos directed a series of videos for Greek dance-theater companies. Since 1995 he has directed TV commercials, short films, experimental theater plays and music videos (such as for Sakis Rouvas). He also worked as a photographer for the covers and interior photos of Rouvas's albums Kati Apo Mena (1998) and 21os Akatallilos (2000). In 2004, he was a member of the creative team that designed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Lanthimos’s feature film career started with the 2001 mainstream Greek comedy My Best Friend, which he co-directed with Lakis Lazopoulos. Lanthimos has disavowed the film, saying he had little creative control, with Lakis Lazopoulos holding full authority. His true artistic breakthrough came with his sophomore feature the experimental and psychological drama Kinetta, which premiered at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival. The film revolves around three nameless protagonists as they attempt to film and photograph various badly reenacted struggles between a man and a woman at a Greek hotel. The film earned mixed to negative reviews. Roger Moore of Movie Nation described it as "overtly navel-gazing, obscure to the point of suggesting obscurant. It’s a 95 minute exercise in minimalism, behavior studies, psychology and boredom." John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter wrote a positive review he stating, "The standoffish debut holds some pleasures for patient viewers" adding, "Lanthimos enjoys provoking us visually...The camera’s gaze is as idiosyncratic as the visions the Driver tries to bring to life, but unlike him, the film seems satisfied with what it creates." In 2008 he directed a production of Natura morta in un fosso written by Fausto Paravidino at the Amore Theatre in Greece.

• Illustration — Lanthimos in September 2015 Lanthimos's third feature film, the Greek psychological drama Dogtooth, won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. Critic Roger Ebert praised Lanthimos for "his command of visuals and performances". The Associated Press described the film as "Disturbing and at times startlingly brutal, the film will alienate those who seek genteel fare at the art house. But its edgy integrity and distinctive atmosphere should win fans in some corners, particularly among those who admire the less tongue-in-cheek work of Lars Von Trier." In 2010, he acted in and co-produced Attenberg, a Greek drama film directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari. His fourth feature film, Alps (2011), won the Osella Award for Best Screenplay at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. A. O. Scott of The New York Times described the film as "systematically unsettling our sense of what is normal and habitual in human interactions." Lanthimos's fifth film was the absurdist black comedy The Lobster (2015) starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly. The script for this film won the ARTE International Award as Best CineMart Project at the 42nd International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury Prize. Chris Nashawatay of Entertainment Weekly praised the film, saying that "Lanthimos' films aren't for everyone. They're deadpan and almost clinically detached. At times they feel like dispatches from a distant alien planet." Lanthimos directed a video vignette for the Radiohead song "Identikit", released on their 2016 album A Moon Shaped Pool. In 2017, Lanthimos directed the psychological horror film The Killing of a Sacred Deer starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman and Barry Keoghan. It premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d'Or. Mark Kermode of The Observer wrote: "As black comedy gives way to grand guignol, we are reminded of the tortured games that Michael Haneke once played upon his bourgeois protagonists and audiences." He also compared it to films such as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), and Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin.

• Illustration — Since 2018, Lanthimos has collaborated with Emma Stone on numerous projects including Poor Things which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 2018 he directed the period black comedy, The Favourite starring Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz. The film is a tragicomic tale of personal and political jealousy and intrigue revolving around Anne, Queen of Great Britain in 18th-century England. It made its debut at the 75th Venice International Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize. The New York Times labeled the film a Critic's Pick with A.O. Scott writing, "Lanthimos, his camera gliding through gilded corridors and down stone staircases — in exquisitely patterned light and shadow, with weird lenses and startling angles — choreographs an elaborate pageant of decorum and violence, claustrophobia and release." The film went on to tie with the Alfonso Cuarón directed drama film Roma for the most nominations at 91st Academy Awards, with ten, including Best Picture and Best Director for Lanthimos (winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for Olivia Colman). He then directed the 16mm black and white silent short Bleat (2022) starring Emma Stone and Damien Bonnard. Bleat was co-commissioned by the Greek National Opera and Athens-based cultural foundation NEON. The story, set on the Greek Cycladic island of Tinos, revolves around a woman in black who is mourning inside a simple house. The film has been described as experimental and surrealist in style and focuses on themes of loneliness, connection, death, and desire as well as human and animal interaction. The film has only been shown twice, first being at the Stavros Niarchos Hall in Athens in 2022, and the second at Alice Tully Hall at the New York Film Festival in 2023. Lanthimos designed Bleat to be screened only in theaters with a live orchestra and chorus. • Illustration — Lanthimos and Emma Stone at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival In 2023, he directed and produced the coming of age dark comedy Poor Things, which is based on the 1992 novel of the same name. The film marked the third collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone, and also featured performances from Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, and Ramy Youssef. The film premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion. Kyle Smith of The Wall Street Journal described the film as "Sumptuous, dazzling and glorious". The film earned eleven nominations at the 96th Academy Awards, winning four (including the Academy Award for Best Actress for Emma Stone) as well as seven nominations at the 81st Golden Globe Awards, where it won Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Lanthimos published a book of behind the scenes photographs in his first photography monograph 'Dear God, the Parthenon is still broken' (Void, 2024). For the anthology film Kinds of Kindness (2024), Lanthimos reunited with many actors he previously worked with such as Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Joe Alwyn and new collaborators Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, and Hunter Schafer. Originally titled AND, the film is centered around three separate stories, with the actors playing a different character in each. It premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2024, and was released on 21 June 2024 by Searchlight Pictures. In January 2024, it was announced he would direct an English-language remake of the 2003 Korean science fiction comedy Save the Green Planet! with Ari Aster as co-producer; in May, it was announced that Stone and Plemons had been cast in the project, now titled Bugonia. The film premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. Also in 2025, he directed the music video "Beth's Farm" for Jerskin Fendrix also starring Stone which was released on 29 July 2025. Lanthimos and Stone are both signatories of the Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge that was published in September 2025. In January 2026, Lanthimos directed Stone on an ad for Squarespace for the Super Bowl.

One of the longest-running projects Yorgos Lanthimos has been developing is an adaptation inspired by Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. It is a contemporary story about a mysterious plague that strikes London. Lanthimos has spoken about the project over the course of several years. In a 2020 interview with filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, he confirmed that he was still working on it, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic led him to reconsider and revisit the script from a fresh perspective. Around the same time in 2020, it was reported that Lanthimos was in talks to direct adaptations of The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western, with Tony McNamara, the screenwriter of Poor Things, writing the script. McNamara later revealed in a late 2023 interview that he had delivered the screenplay to Lanthimos. New Regency and Vertigo Entertainment joined as co-producers, following the announcement of a Pop. 1280 project in 2019. In a 2023 interview, Efthimis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos’s longtime screenwriter and regular collaborator, revealed that the two have been working for some time on adapting a prominent crime novel from the 1960s. He did not disclose the title of the book. In 2024 it was reported that Lanthimos was working on an adaptation of My Year of Rest and Relaxation together with author Ottessa Moshfegh, though he has since dropped out of the project. In February 2025, it was reported that Lanthimos would write and direct an adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette's thriller Fatale with James Schamus producing.

Lanthimos has been widely described as one of the most talented and innovative auteurs of his generation. He is a part of a postmodern film movement known as the Greek Weird Wave. His films Kinetta, Dogtooth, and Alps are greatly influenced by his Greek heritage. Similarly, his English-language films The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer continue to investigate similar thematic issues. Lanthimos's films often feature uniquely framed cinematography, deadpan acting, and characters with stilted speech. They are known for mixing absurdist dark comedy with violent and sexually explicit content, as well as eccentric world-building. Lanthimos has explored sexually taboo subjects in his films, such as rape and incest. His films are often sociopolitical in nature, and often explore the nature of power and its impact on the people who are vying for, using, or being exploited or influenced by it.

In 2023, Lanthimos along with Costa-Gavras, was part of a campaign aiming to save historic cinemas in Athens from demolition. He said: “We should be able to understand the value of the historical cinemas of Athens for society and culture. I plead with those in charge and those with real power to do what is necessary,” At the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in August 2025, Lanthimos wore a Palestinian flag pin during the press conference and the premiere of his film Bugonia. In September 2025, Lanthimos signed the Film Workers for Palestine letter pledging that he would not work with Israeli film institutions implicated in the genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people. In January 2026, Lanthimos was among 800 Hollywood professionals who signed a statement condemning the Iranian regime for its atrocities during the 2025–2026 Iranian protests, where civilians were protesting against repression.

While working as an actor and producer on Attenberg (2010), Lanthimos met and began dating the film's star, Ariane Labed. They married in 2013. They lived in London from 2011 until 2021, and as of 2023 they live in Athens.

• Year — Title — Notes • 2002 — D.D.D — Theatro tou Notou (Amore-Dokimes) • 2004 — Bluebeard — Theatro Porta • 2008 — Natura morta in un fosso — Theatro tou Notou (Amore) • 2011 — Platonov — National Theatre of Greece

• Title — Year — Artist — Album • "I paramythenia" — 1996 — Katerina Kyrmizi — Kontsérto Gia Sokoláta Kai Triantáfylla • "Deka Entoles" — 1998 — Despina Vandi — Deka Entoles • "Theleis I Den Theleis" — Sakis Rouvas — Kati Apo Mena • "Tora Mou Milaei" — Stella Georgiadou — Apofasismeni • "I Kardia Mou" — Sakis Rouvas — Kati Apo Mena • "Den Ehi Sidera I Kardia Sou" — 1999 • "Ipirhes Panda" • "Andexa" — 2000 — 21os Akatallilos • "Delfinaki" • "Andexa" (Club Mix) — 2001 • "Irthes" — 2009 — Irthes • "Identikit" (video vignette) — 2016 — Radiohead — A Moon Shaped Pool • "Beth's Farm" — 2025 — Jerskin Fendrix — Once Upon a Time... In Shropshire

• Year — Title — Company — References • 2020 — "Of Course a Horse" — Gucci • 2020 — "Ageless" — TENA • 2025 — "Ritual Identities" — Prada • 2026 — "Unavailable" — Squarespace • 2026 — "The Feest" — Grubhub

• rowspan=2 — 2001 — 2005 — 2009 — 2011 — 2015 — 2017 — 2018 — 2023 — 2024 — 2025 • My Best Friend — Kinetta — Dogtooth — Alps — The Lobster — The Killing of a Sacred Deer — The Favourite — Poor Things — Kinds of Kindness — Bugonia — Total • Steve Krikris — 2 • Tina Papanikolaou — 2 • Aris Servetalis — 2 • Angeliki Papoulia — 3 • Ariane Labed — 2 • Colin Farrell — 2 • Olivia Colman — 2 • Anthony Dougall — 2 • Rachel Weisz — 2 • Alicia Silverstone — 2 • Emma Stone — 4 • John Locke — 2 • Joe Alwyn — 2 • Willem Dafoe — 2 • Jerskin Fendrix — 3 • Yorgos Stefanakos — 2 • Margaret Qualley — 2 • Jesse Plemons — 2

Major awards and nominations received by Yorgos Lanthimos • Organizations — Year — Category — Work — Result • Academy Awards — 2017 — Best Original Screenplay — The Lobster • 2019 — Best Director — The Favourite • Best Picture • 2024 — Best Director — Poor Things • Best Picture • 2026 — Best Picture — Bugonia • British Academy Film Awards — 2016 — Best British Film — The Lobster • 2019 — Best British Film — The Favourite • Best Director • Best Film • 2024 — Best British Film — Poor Things • Best Film • 2026 — Best Director — Bugonia • Golden Globe Awards — 2019 — Best Picture Musical/Comedy — The Favourite • 2024 — Best Picture Musical/Comedy — Poor Things • Best Director • 2026 — Best Picture Musical/Comedy — Bugonia • Producers Guild of America Awards — 2019 — Best Picture — The Favourite • 2024 — Best Picture — Poor Things • 2026 — Best Picture — Bugonia • Directors Guild of America Awards — 2024 — Best Director — Poor Things • Critics Choice Awards — 2016 — Best Original Screenplay — The Lobster • 2019 — Best Picture — The Favourite • Best Director • Best Comedy • 2024 — Best Picture — Poor Things • Best Director • Best Comedy • 2026 — Best Picture — Bugonia • European Film Awards — 2015 — Best European Film — The Lobster • Best European Director • People's Choice Award • Best European Screenwriter • 2017 — Best European Director — The Killing of a Sacred Deer • Best European Screenwriter • 2019 — Best European Film — The Favourite • Best European Director • People's Choice Award • Best European Comedy • 2026 — Best European Director — Bugonia • Venice Film Festival — 2011 — Golden Lion — Alps • Best Screenplay • 2018 — Golden Lion — The Favourite • Grand Special Jury Prize • Queer Lion • 2023 — Golden Lion — Poor Things • UNIMED Award • 2025 — Golden Lion — Bugonia • Green Drop Award • Cannes Film Festival — 2009 — Un Certain Regard Award — Dogtooth • Award of the Youth • 2015 — Palme d'Or — The Lobster • Jury Prize • Queer Palm • 2017 — Palme d'Or — The Killing of a Sacred Deer • Best Screenplay • 2024 — Palme d'Or — Kinds of Kindness Awards and nominations received by Lanthimos Directed films • Year — Title — Academy Awards — BAFTA Awards — Golden Globe Awards — Critics Choice Awards — Producers, Directors and Writers Guild Awards — Actor Awards — European Film Awards — Total Award Nominations and Wins • Nominations — Wins — Nominations — Wins — Nominations — Wins — Nominations — Wins — Nominations — Wins — Nominations — Wins — Nominations — Wins — Nominations — Wins • 2005 — Kinetta — 1 • 2009 — Dogtooth — 1 — 42 — 21 • 2011 — Alps — 12 — 5 • 2015 — The Lobster — 1 — 1 — 1 — 1 — 6 — 2 — 117 — 33 • 2017 — The Killing of a Sacred Deer — 3 — 60 — 7 • 2018 — The Favourite — 10 — 1 — 12 — 7 — 5 — 1 — 14 — 2 — 1 — 3 — 9 — 8 — 539 — 187 • 2019 — Nimic — 8 — 2 • 2023 — Poor Things — 11 — 4 — 11 — 5 — 7 — 2 — 13 — 1 — 2 — 2 — 546 — 120 • 2024 — Kinds of Kindness — 1 — 12 — 3 • 2025 — Bugonia — 4 — 5 — 3 — 3 — 2 — 2 — 6 — 1 — 125 — 9 • Total — 27 — 5 — 29 — 12 — 17 — 3 — 31 — 3 — 5 — 7 — 24 — 11 — 1462 — 387 According to IMDb* Directed Academy Award performances Under Lanthimos' direction, these actors have received Academy Award wins and nominations for their performances in their respective roles. • Year — Performer — Film — Result • Academy Award for Best Actress • 2018 — Olivia Colman — The Favourite • 2023 — Emma Stone — Poor Things • 2025 — Bugonia • Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor • 2023 — Mark Ruffalo — Poor Things • Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress • 2018 — Emma Stone — The Favourite • Rachel Weisz

Yorgos Lanthimos is recorded as having received European Film Award for Best Screenwriter, European Film Award for Best Film and European Film Award for Best Comedy.

• Year — Title — Director — Producer — Writer • 2001 — My Best Friend • 2005 — Kinetta • 2009 — Dogtooth • 2011 — Alps • 2015 — The Lobster • 2017 — The Killing of a Sacred Deer • 2018 — The Favourite • 2023 — Poor Things • 2024 — Kinds of Kindness • 2025 — Bugonia

• Year — Title — Director — Writer — Producer • 1995 — O viasmos tis Hlois • 1995 — The Rape of Chloe • 2001 — Uranisco Disco • 2013 — Necktie • 2019 — Nimic • 2022 — Bleat