Steven Soderbergh

Steven Andrew Soderbergh (born January 14, 1963) is an acclaimed American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. A pioneer of modern independent cinema, Soderbergh later drew acclaim for formally inventive films made within the studio system. He is known for his directorial breakthrough, the indie drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), which catapulted him into the public spotlight as a notable presence in the film industry. At 26, Soderbergh became the youngest solo director to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His next five films, which included King of the Hill (1993), were commercially unsuccessful, leading to a pivot towards more mainstream fare with the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), the biopic Erin Brockovich (2000) and the crime drama Traffic (2000) for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director.

Soderbergh's cinematic repertoire spans genres, but his favor falls on psychological, crime, and heist films. His projects have grossed over US$2.2 billion worldwide and garnered fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning five. While his films often revolve around familiar Hollywood tropes, he employs an avant-garde approach, defining them in terms of shifting personal identities, morality, and human condition. They are also distinctively marked by his influences from avant-garde cinema, using unconventional film and camera formats, multi-dimensional storylines, plot twists, nonlinear storytelling, and suspenseful soundscapes. Soderbergh has demonstrated his versatility by making both bigger-budget Hollywood films and smaller independent cinema.