Kelly Reichardt

Kelly Reichardt (born March 3, 1964) is an American film director and screenwriter.

She is known for her minimalist films closely associated with slow cinema, many of which deal with working-class characters in small, rural communities.

Reichardt was born in 1964 and raised in Miami, Florida.

She developed a passion for photography when she was young.

Her parents were law enforcement officers who separated when she was young.

She earned her MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Reichardt then had trouble making another feature film, saying, "I had 10 years from the mid-1990s when I couldn't get a movie made. It had a lot to do with being a woman. That's definitely a factor in raising money. During that time, it was impossible to get anything going, so I just said, 'Fuck you!' and did Super 8 shorts instead."

Reichardt made her feature film debut with River of Grass (1994) and subsequently directed a series of films set and filmed in Oregon: the dramas Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008); the Western Meek's Cutoff (2010); and the thriller Night Moves (2013).

Reichardt's debut film River of Grass was released in 1994.

It was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards, and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

It was named one of the best films of 1995 by the Boston Globe, Film Comment, and The Village Voice.

In 1999, Reichardt completed the short film Ode, based on Herman Raucher's novel Ode to Billy Joe.

Next she made two more short films, Then a Year, in 2001, and Travis, which deals with the Iraq War, in 2004.

In these two films, critics have noted that she subtly makes clear her displeasure with the Bush administration and its handling of the Iraq War.

Most of Reichardt's films are regarded by critics to be part of the minimalist movement in films, though Reichardt sees a difference between her work and the movement as a whole.

After Todd Haynes, a close friend of Reichardt, made Safe, she drove Haynes to Portland from the Seattle Film Festival, where she met writer Jon Raymond and Neil Kopp, who respectively wrote and produced several of Reichardt's films.

Reichardt has served as the S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence at Bard College since 2006.

In 2006, she completed Old Joy, based on a short story in Raymond's collection Livability.

Daniel London and singer-songwriter Will Oldham portray two friends who reunite for a camping trip to the Cascades and Bagby Hot Springs, near Portland.

The film won awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Rotterdam International Film Festival, and Sarasota Film Festival.

Notably, it was the first American film to win the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

Kopp won the Producer's Award at the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards for his work on Old Joy and Paranoid Park.

For her next film, Wendy and Lucy, Reichardt and Raymond adapted another story from Livability.

The film explores loneliness and hopelessness through the story of a woman looking for her lost dog.

It was released in December 2008 and earned Oscar buzz for lead actress Michelle Williams.

It was nominated for Best Film and Best Female Lead at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Reichardt then directed Meek's Cutoff, a Western also starring Williams.

Reichardt's film Certain Women is based on Maile Meloy's 2009 short-story collection Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, and was shot in March–April 2015 in Montana.

Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, Lily Gladstone, and Kristen Stewart star.

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA) bought the rights to distribution.

It competed for the Golden Lion at the 67th Venice International Film Festival in 2010.

In 2013, Reichardt's film Night Moves debuted in competition at the 70th Venice International Film Festival.

A more intense thriller about a secret plot to blow up a dam, it was considered a shift in tone from her other slower, more melancholic films.

In 2016, she wrote and directed the Montana-set drama Certain Women.

The film premiered on January 24, 2016, at the Sundance Film Festival.

Reichardt won the top award at the 2016 London Film Festival for Certain Women.

In October 2016, Reichardt revealed that on her next film she would collaborate with author Patrick deWitt on an adaptation of his novel Undermajordomo Minor, which might be shot outside of the U.S. In October 2018, it was announced that Reichardt had put Undermajordomo Minor on hold and would instead reunite with Raymond To direct First Cow, an adaptation of his novel The Half-Life.

Reichardt's films have received positive reviews from critics, with all of them above 80% on the film reviews aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with the highest being River of Grass and First Cow (both 95%).

Her films have not been big box-office successes, with Certain Women the most successful at $1.1 million.

Since 2019, Reichardt has returned to directing Oregon-set dramas, with First Cow (2019), and Showing Up (2022).