Sean Durkin
Birthdate – December 9, 1981 (42 Years Old)
Birthplace – Canada
Sean Durkin (birthname: Timothy Sean Durkin) is the unusual Canadian-American director/writer/producer who has produced or executive-produced three times as many movies as he has made.
After directing his thesis film for the NYU film school, Doris (2006), Durkin wrote and directed or produced four more short films through 2010, as well as being producer (with Josh Mond) of writer-director Antonio Campos’s drama, Afterschool (2008), the first of several features made under the banner of Borderline Films, co-founded by Durkin, Campos, and Mond, and serving as executive producer of Borderline’s drama written and directed by Alistair Banks Griffin, Two Gates of Sleep (2010), starring Brady Corbet.
Durkin then wrote and directed his highly acclaimed feature debut for Borderline, Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), co-starring the debuting Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, Corbet, and Julia Garner, and which won Durkin the Best Director award at the Sundance film festival, and earning a healthy gross of $5.4 million globally. Sean Durkin was a producer on the Borderline production, writer-director Campos’ Simon Killer (2012), co-starring Crobet and Mati Diop (who co-wrote the story with Campos) and premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.
Durkin returned as a producer for fellow Borderline Films co-founder Mond’s feature debut as writer-director, James White (2015), with Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Scott Mescudi, and Ron Livingston. The film won the grand prize in Sundance’s NEXT competition. Between 2016 and 2020, Durkin was executive producer of director-writer Nicolas Pesce’s black-and-white horror movie, The Eyes of My Mother (2016).
He also contributed to the Campos-directed Christine (2016), starring Rebecca Hall, and the writer-director Wayne Roberts’ drama, Katie Says Goodbye (2016), starring Olivia Cooke. Further, he was involved in director-writer Pesce’s horror-thriller adaptation of Ryu Murakami’s Piercing (2018), co-starring Abbott and Mia Wasikowska, and Dave Franco’s director/writer/producer debut, The Rental (2020), with Dan Stevens, Alison Brie, and Sheila Vand.
For the first time, Durkin was director/writer/producer of a movie not made under the Borderline Films banner, his superb drama, The Nest (2020), co-starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon, premiering at the Sundance film festival and grossing $2 million worldwide. Sean Durkin returned as director/writer/producer of his biggest movie to date (at a $16 million budget), the biographical sports drama, The Iron Claw (2023), starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, and Lily James, and released in the U.S. by A24.
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Personal Details
Sean Durkin was born in Canada and raised in North London and Surrey in the United Kingdom, and then in Manhattan, where his family moved when he was 12 years old. Durkin attended and graduated from the Connecticut-based Kent School, followed by a period in which he majored in filmmaking at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, from which he graduated in 2005.
Filmography
The Nest
Producer(produced by) (2020)
The Rental
(2020)
The Iron Claw
(2023)
Piercing
(2019)
Some Facts About Sean Durkin
Scary: Sean Durkin has noted in interviews that he liked being scared as a child, saying “I’m attracted to fear. I’m attracted to movies that scare you. I knew I would just end up working in that realm.”
When I Grow Up…: Before he had dreams of making movies, Durkin wanted to be a professional soccer player.
Favorites: Sean Durkin’s top ten movies he selected for Sight & Sound magazine’s 2012 critics’ and filmmakers’ poll were (in alphabetical order): Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977), Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Richard Donner’s The Goonies (1985), Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), Jerry Schatzberg’s The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001), Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980).
Not For Hire: Durkin has commented that he will never be a director-for-hire, and instead develops all of his feature film projects, largely through his own company (co-founded with filmmakers Josh Mond and Antonio Campos), Borderline Films.
Awards
Nominee, Best Mini-Series, BAFTA Awards (2014); Two-time Winner, Prix Regards Jeune/SFR Prize, Cannes Film Festival (2010); Four-time Nominee, Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You/Breakthrough Director/Audience Award/Breakthrough Series Over 40 Minutes, Gotham Awards (2008, 2011, 2015, 2023); Three-time Nominee, Best First Feature, Independent Spirit Awards (2009, 2012, 2016); Winner, New Generation Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association (2011); Nominee, Best First Film, New York Film Critics Circle Award (2011); Winner, Best Director-U.S. Dramatic Competition, Sundance Film Festival (2011).
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