Charlotte Wells

Charlotte Wells (born 13 June 1987) is a Scottish director, writer, and producer. She is known for her feature film debut Aftersun (2022), which premiered in 2022 during Critics' Week at Cannes Film Festival, receiving 121 nominations and 33 awards, including Gotham and British Independent Film Awards. Wells has worked on numerous other films, such as Blue Christmas (2017), and her films have been screened at festivals all around the globe.

Early life and education
Wells was born in Edinburgh. She attended secondary school at the independent George Heriot's School. Wells did not live with her father, who passed away when she was sixteen years old. However, she remembers him as a very involved parent, despite the living situation. The father-daughter dynamic was a frequent topic of conversation after her first feature-film debut Aftersun, a film about a father and daughter.

Wells was interested in film from a young age, but did not initially pursue it. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Classics from King's College London and then a Master of Arts from Oxford University. She went into finance and rediscovered film through helping Callum Just, a school friend, run Digital Orchard, a post-production and DIT agency. She used this experience to apply to New York University's joint business and film graduate program with the intention of becoming a producer. She completed a dual Master of Fine Arts and Master of Business Administration at Tisch School of the Arts and the Stern School.

While at NYU, Wells created three short films: Tuesday (2015), about a sixteen-year-old learning to cope with a big loss, featuring Megan McGill, which earned Wells the Best Writer Nominee at BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards 2016; Laps (2016), about a normal weekday, until the main character is sexually assaulted on the New York subway, featuring Thea Brooks, which earned Wells Special Jury Recognition at the SXSW Short Film Awards and Special Jury Award for Editing at Sundance 2017; and Blue Christmas (2017), about a debt collector who goes to work instead of seeing his wife on Christmas Eve to avoid her worsening psychosis, featuring Jamie Robson and Michelle Duncan.

Career
Before starting her career in the film industry as a producer, Wells helped run Digital Orchard, a company specialising in film, finishing images, developing film and digital imaging. Wells was a fellow at the 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs with her feature film debut Aftersun, which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim. The film is a drama starring Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio. She received many accolades as a breakthrough director and appeared on numerous year-end lists. Aftersun received an Academy Award nomination for Paul Mescal's performance.

Aftersun
Aftersun is a coming-of-age drama which tells the story of a young woman, Sophie, recalling a holiday she took with her father, Calum (Paul Mescal), 20 years prior, for Calum's 31st birthday. The 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) does not spend a lot of time with her father, who does not live with her and her mother anymore. The time they spend on this holiday is very precious to them. Calum takes Sophie on a trip to a Turkish budget resort, where Calum struggles with feelings of depression. The adult Sophie is trying to remember her father by looking back on this holiday, and piece together the memories she has with the help of the videos she and her father took on vacation.

The film is shot on 35mm film and partly by the actors themselves on a MiniDV camera. This camera is used for many of the scenes with Sophie during the holiday, including playing with friends at the resort and spending time with her father. The 35mm footage is spread throughout the film to intimately depict the father-daughter dynamic from Sophie's perspective. Calum is shown to be struggling with depression, while Sophie struggles with living apart from her father. Adult Sophie is, as she was when she was young, slowly figuring out who her father was as a person, not just as a father.

The subject matter of the film sparked conversation regarding Charlotte Wells' personal life. Well's father died when she was sixteen and she lived apart from her father, though she did not feel that he was uninvolved with her upbringing. The father-daughter dynamic was not something that Wells was initially trying to uncover in her film, but rather something that came during the film's making. The first goal was to show how a relationship can shift over time. Aftersun received 121 nominations, including a nomination for best actor at the 2023 Academy Awards for Paul Mescal's performance. The film was named the Best Directorial Debut of 2022 by the National Board of Review.