Gattaca

Gattaca is a 1997 American science fiction film written and directed by Andrew Niccol. It stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, with Jude Law, Loren Dean, Ernest Borgnine, Gore Vidal, and Alan Arkin appearing in supporting roles. The film presents a biopunk vision of a future society driven by eugenics where potential children are conceived through genetic manipulation to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. The film centers on Vincent Freeman, played by Hawke, who was conceived outside the eugenics program and struggles to overcome genetic discrimination to realize his dream of traveling into space.

The movie draws on concerns over reproductive technologies which facilitate eugenics, and the possible consequences of such technological developments for society. It also explores the idea of destiny and the ways in which it can and does govern lives. Characters in Gattaca continually battle both with society and with themselves to find their place in the world and who they are destined to be according to their genes.

Ethan Hawke

Ethan Green Hawke (born November 6, 1970) is an American actor, writer and director. He has been nominated for four Academy Awards, both as an actor and a writer, and a Tony Award. Hawke has directed two feature films, three Off-Broadway plays, and a documentary, and wrote the novels The Hottest State (1996) and Ash Wednesday (2002).

Hawke made his film debut in 1985 with the science fiction feature Explorers, before making a breakthrough appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society. He then appeared in numerous films before taking a role in the 1994 Generation X drama Reality Bites, for which he received critical praise. In 1995 he starred in the romantic drama Before Sunrise, and later in its sequels Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013).

In 2001, Hawke played a young police officer in Training Day, for which he received the Academy Award and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nominations in the Best Supporting Actor category. He also garnered two screenwriting Oscar nominations for co-writing the screenplays of Before Sunset and Before Midnight. In 2014, his role as the father in the coming-of-age film Boyhood earned him multiple award nominations, including the Academy, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Uma Thurman

Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. Following early roles in films such as Dangerous Liaisons (1988), she rose to international prominence in 1994 following her role in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award. She starred in several more films throughout the 1990s such as The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Batman & Robin, Gattaca and Les Misérables.

She won a Golden Globe Award for the TV movie Hysterical Blindness (2002). Her career was somewhat revitalized when she reunited with director Quentin Tarantino to play the main role in both Kill Bill films (2003/2004) which brought her an additional two Golden Globe Award nominations with a BAFTA Award nomination.

Early life

Andrew Niccol

Andrew M. Niccol (born 10 June 1964) is a New Zealand screenwriter, producer, and director. He wrote and directed Gattaca (1997), S1m0ne (2002), Lord of War (2005), In Time (2011), The Host (2013), and Good Kill (2014). He also wrote and co-produced The Truman Show, which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 1999 and won a BAFTA award for Best Screenplay. His films tend to explore social, cultural and political issues, as well as artificial realities or simulations.

His film Good Kill has been selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival.

Biography

Niccol was born in Paraparaumu, New Zealand, and grew up in Auckland, where he attended Auckland Grammar School beginning in 1973. He left New Zealand at age 21 and began directing TV ads in London, which he did for more than ten years before his directorial debut, Gattaca (1997). During production of S1m0ne, he met model and actress Rachel Roberts, with whom he has two children, Jack Niccol, (who also played "Young Nicolai" in the film Lord of War (2005)) and Ava Niccol.

Michael Nyman

Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for numerous film scores (many written during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway), and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano. He has additionally written a number of operas, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Letters, Riddles and Writs, Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs, Facing Goya, Man and Boy: Dada, Love Counts, and Sparkie: Cage and Beyond, and he has written six concerti, four string quartets, and many other chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band, with and without whom he tours as a performing pianist. Nyman stated that he prefers to write opera rather than other sorts of music.

Early life and education

Nyman was born in Stratford, London to a family of Polish secular Jewish furriers.

Nyman was educated at the Sir George Monoux Grammar School, Walthamstow. He studied at King's College London under Alan Bush and was accepted at the Royal Academy of Music in September 1961, studying with Bush and Thurston Dart, focusing on piano and seventeenth-century baroque music. He won the Howard Carr Memorial Prize for composition in July 1964. In 1965–66 Nyman secured a residency in Romania, to study folk-song, supported by a British Council bursary.