Eliza Hittman

To date, I have made a trilogy of unsentimental feature films about youth. I have always been fascinated with coming-of-age films, not as a narrative of transformation but rather as a process of disillusionment. I investigate taboos around sexuality and identity. I show audiences experiences they wouldn’t see in other coming-of-age films: the lonely moments, the surges of false confidence, and small humiliating details that are often buried in our collective memories and journeys to adulthood. With each film, I expand my method and style, but am perpetually drawn to the “in-between”. My cinema is liminal; emotionally, dramatically, spatially. It Felt Like Love mines the painful distance between childhood and the adult world, as an adolescent girl realizes her value hinges on her sexual appeal to men. In Beach Rats, a teenager living a double life spends the summer playing handball with neighborhood boys and nights meeting men on a dark beach. …. Never Rarely Sometimes Always, a teenager realizes her body is not her own when she becomes pregnant and is forced to travel to New York City for an abortion. The writing process is driven by anthropological fieldwork; documenting places and interviewing relevant subjects to help craft a story that is emotionally and dramatically credible. In directing, my work explores a subjective, more poetic form of realism and hews to the main character’s perceptions. Resisting the conventions of verité, I strive for a more poised camera that erases the presence of the filmmaker.

Harris Dickinson as Frankie (centre), surrounded by his posse in Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats (2017)

Eliza Hittman is an award-winning filmmaker, born and based in Brooklyn, NY. Her most recent feature Never Rarely Sometimes Always premiered in the International Competition at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear. It premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. It was nominated for 7 Independent Spirit Awards, and won a New York Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay and Best Actress. Her film Beach Rats premiered in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where she won the Directing Award. It premiered internationally at Locarno in the Golden Leopard Competition and was the Centerpiece Film at New Directors / New Films. It was the winner of the Artios Award for Outstanding Achievement in Casting, Outstanding Screenwriting in a U.S. Feature at Outfest, and the London Critics’ Circle Film Award for Young British/Irish Performer of the Year. She earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor of Film/Video at Pratt Institute. She was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.