Andrew Haigh makes intimate dramas in which an old hurt can unsettle an ordinary conversation. We rate him highly for his patience with actors, though his scripts sometimes explain what their faces have already told us.
Fi1m perspective
In All of Us Strangers (2023), a grown man visits his childhood home and finds his dead parents asking whether he has eaten. Andrew Haigh treats this impossible meeting as an ordinary family visit, with Andrew Scott facing Claire Foy and Jamie Bell. We were moved by that domestic concern, because it makes the years Adam has spent without his parents painfully apparent. Haigh is particularly good at letting people ask small questions when they have much larger ones to face.
After his feature debut, Greek Pete (2009), Weekend (2011) established his reputation for intimate queer relationship dramas. Its two men talk in a flat, and Haigh gives them time to listen; he does not hurry past the awkwardness. Long takes and minimal cutting are recurring habits, and editor Jonathan Alberts is a regular collaborator. That patience matters: a conversation can become uncomfortable without a change of shot telling us where to look.
In 45 Years (2015), a letter about a former girlfriend unsettles a retired couple before their wedding anniversary. Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay make a settled marriage convincing before making its familiarity uncomfortable. Haigh trusts their smallest reactions, so that a question which once seemed unnecessary can suddenly become urgent. We are given time to notice how much the couple have taken for granted. The writing does eventually explain more than it needs to, a small weakness made conspicuous by the precision of the acting.
With All of Us Strangers, Haigh becomes more openly emotional, allowing romance and the supernatural into a story of grief. Scott’s scenes with Foy and Bell are the reason to see it; the romance alongside them is thinner. Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch keeps the strings low and unobtrusive, but Haigh sometimes asks the pop songs to do more than the writing has earned. We welcome the greater openness, even when the pressure to be moved becomes too obvious. Start with 45 Years for the trust he places in actors, then try All of Us Strangers for what happens when he is less determined to hold back.
Biography
Andrew Haigh is an English filmmaker. Born on 7 March 1973 in Harrogate, he grew up in Croydon and studied history at Newcastle University. He began his career as an assistant editor on films including Gladiator (2000) and Black Hawk Down (2001) before making his feature debut as writer and director with Greek Pete (2009).
Haigh is best known for writing and directing the films Weekend (2011), 45 Years (2015), Lean on Pete (2017) and All of Us Strangers (2023). He also created the HBO series Looking (2014–2015) and its sequel film Looking: The Movie (2016), and wrote and directed the BBC limited series The North Water (2021).
