Ari Aster

Ari Aster (born July 15, 1986) is an American filmmaker. Having garnered some initial recognition for the short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), he became best known for writing and directing Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023), all of which were released by A24. His films have been noted for their unsettling combination of horror, dark comedy, and depictions of graphic violence. In 2018, he co-founded the production company Square Peg with Danish producer Lars Knudsen.

Early life
Aster was born into a Jewish family in New York City on July 15, 1986, the son of a poet mother and jazz musician father. He has a younger brother. He recalled seeing his first film, Dick Tracy (1990), when he was four years old; the film featured a scene where Warren Beatty's titular protagonist fired a Tommy gun in front of a wall of fire, allegedly causing Aster to jump from his seat and run "six New York City blocks" while his mother tried to catch him. As a child, he and his family briefly lived in England, where his father opened a jazz nightclub in Chester. When he was 10 years old, they returned to the U.S. and settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he spent the remainder of his childhood.

Aster originally aspired to become an author and became interested in filmmaking through screenwriting; although he would not begin actually making films until college, he had written six feature-length screenplays during his high school years. As a child, he became obsessed with horror films and frequently rented them from local video stores: "I just exhausted the horror section of every video store I could find. I didn't know how to assemble people who would cooperate on something like that. I found myself just writing screenplays." In 2004, he began studying film at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, where he also wrote for the local Weekly Alibi arts magazine. He graduated in 2008 and debuted as the writer and director of the short film Tale of Two Tims, which he submitted to the American Film Institute (AFI). This led to him being accepted into the 2010 class of fellows at the AFI Conservatory's graduate program, where he earned an MFA with a focus in directing.

Career
After graduating from the AFI Conservatory, Aster wrote and directed several more short films between 2011 and 2018, often teaming with his AFI Conservatory friends Alejandro de Leon and Pawel Pogorzelski. The most notable project was the short psychological horror film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), which follows the members of a suburban family in which the father finds himself trapped in an incestuous relationship with his abusive son. The film was Aster's thesis film while studying at the AFI Conservatory, and was later screened at film festivals; it premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah on January 22 before leaking online in November, where it went viral. Film website Short of the Week wrote that the comments on the film's YouTube page had "everything from effusive acclaim to disgusted vitriol [...] in terms of the internet, that means it's a hit". Aster worked on the film with fellow AFI students. He first conceived the story while discussing taboos with his friends, including the film's star Brandon Greenhouse, before starting his first year at AFI.

Aster made his feature-length directorial debut when he wrote and directed the supernatural horror film Hereditary (2018), which follows a family haunted by a mysterious presence after the death of their secretive grandmother. The film premiered in the Midnight section at that year's Sundance Film Festival, and was theatrically released in the United States on June 8. It was acclaimed by critics, with Toni Collette's performance receiving particular praise, and was a commercial success; it grossed over $80 million on a $10 million budget, becoming A24's highest-grossing film worldwide. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone named it the scariest film of 2018.

Aster next wrote and directed the folk horror film Midsommar (2019), which was also produced by A24. It follows a group of American university students who travel to Sweden for a festival that occurs once every 90 years and find themselves in the clutches of a cult claiming to practise paganism. Midsommar was theatrically released in the United States on July 3. The film received positive reviews from critics, with many praising Aster's direction and Florence Pugh's performance. Aster's original 171-minute cut of the film, which A24 asked him to trim down for a wide theatrical release, had its world premiere at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City as part of its Scary Movies XII lineup on August 20. For his work on the film, Aster received a nomination for Best Screenplay at the 29th Gotham Independent Film Awards.

In June 2019, Aster and Danish producer Lars Knudsen announced that they had launched a new production company called Square Peg. In June 2020, Aster said his next film would be a "nightmare comedy" that lasts for four hours. In February 2021, A24 announced that Aster would write and direct Beau Is Afraid (2023) as its third partnership with him. The film follows an anxiety-fueled and paranoid middle-aged man who must venture out on a surreal odyssey to visit his mother's home. It was originally titled Disappointment Blvd. It was released in theaters on April 21. The film received positive reviews, with some critics and viewers praising Aster's direction and Joaquin Phoenix's performance, but the film was not a commercial success as it earned around $10 million at the box office against a budget of $35 million.

In 2021, Aster signed a first-look TV deal with A24. In August 2022, it was announced that Aster would reteam with A24 to produce Kristoffer Borgli's third feature film Dream Scenario, with Nicolas Cage attached to star. The film would be produced by Square Peg, which also expanded its slate to include films by Kantemir Balagov, Guy Maddin, Don Hertzfeldt, and Sebastián Silva, as well as television adaptations of J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World, Nick Drnaso's Acting Class, and Junji Ito's Uzumaki. While Hertzfeldt's project, Antarctica, reportedly "fell apart", Hertzfeldt and Aster have begun collaborating on an as-yet untitled "big" and "very expensive" film.

Aster wrote and is currently directing the contemporary Western black comedy film Eddington, which is being co-produced by A24 and Square Peg.

Influences
Aster participated in the 2022 edition of the Sight & Sound film polls, which are held every 10 years to commemorate the greatest films of all time and rank them in order, while directors and critics both name their 10 favorite films of all time. Aster named his favorites as Sansho the Bailiff (1954), Vertigo (1958), 8½ (1963), Persona (1966), Playtime (1967), Barry Lyndon (1975), Raging Bull (1980), Shoah (1985), Songs from the Second Floor (2000), and A Serious Man (2009). However, he also mentioned his belief that "the ranking of art is a fool's errand".