Michael Winterbottom (born 29 March 1961) is an English film director. He began his career working in British television before moving into features. Three of his films—Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), Wonderland (1999) and 24 Hour Party People (2002)—have competed for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He and co-director Mat Whitecross won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival for their work on The Road to Guantánamo (2006).
His production company, Revolution Films, has a first-look deal with Fremantle.
Winterbottom was born in Blackburn, Lancashire. He went to Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn, and then studied English at Balliol College, Oxford, before going to film school at Bristol University, where his contemporaries included Marc Evans.
Winterbottom's television directing career began in 1989, with a documentary about Ingmar Bergman and an episode of the children's series Dramarama. He followed this with the 1990 television film Forget About Me, starring Ewen Bremner, which followed two British soldiers who become involved in a love triangle with a young Hungarian hitch-hiker on their way to Budapest for a Simple Minds concert. It was his first collaboration with writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce; they would go on to make six more films together. Shot on 16 mm film, it was shown at a few European film festivals. In 1991, he directed episodes of various TV shows, including the four-part children's series Time Riders and an episode of Boon. In 1992, he directed the television film Under the Sun about a young British woman travelling in Greece, starring Kate Hardie. It was shot on Super 16 mm film, and gained him further attention. In 1993, he directed an episode of the Inspector Alleyn Mysteries; Love Lies Bleeding, a television film written by Ronan Bennett about a convicted IRA member on a 24-hour home leave from prison in Belfast; and The Mad Woman in the Attic, the pilot of Jimmy McGovern's mystery series Cracker. He next directed the 1994 mini-series Family, written by Roddy Doyle, the author of The Commitments. It was a success in Ireland and led to a debate there about the depiction of both the working classes and spousal abuse in the media. His final early television project was a 1995 episode of the documentary series Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood, focusing on Scandinavian silent cinema.
Butterfly Kiss, Winterbottom's 1995 debut feature, followed a mentally unbalanced lesbian serial killer and her submissive lover/accomplice as they fall in love while slaughtering their way across the motorways of Northern England. It found only a limited release.
That same year, he reunited with Jimmy McGovern for the BBC television film Go Now, the story of a young man who falls ill with multiple sclerosis just as he meets the love of his life. Focusing on the turmoil this causes the couple, the film was given a theatrical release in many countries. It was also the first film from Winterbottom's company Revolution Films.
His 1996 film Jude starred Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet. It was an adaptation of Winterbottom's favourite novel, Thomas Hardy's bleak classic Jude the Obscure, a tale of forbidden love between two cousins. The film brought Winterbottom wider recognition, his first screening at Cannes and numerous Hollywood offers.
1997's Welcome to Sarajevo was filmed on location in the titular city, mere months after the Siege of Sarajevo had ended. It was based on the true story of British reporter, Michael Nicholson, who spirited a young orphan girl out of the war zone to safety in Britain.
His 1998 film I Want You is a neo-noir sex thriller set in a decaying British seaside resort town. Starring Rachel Weisz and Alessandro Nivola, it was inspired by the Elvis Costello song of the same name and shot by Polish cinematographer Sławomir Idziak, who won an Honourable Mention award at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival for his work.
He followed that with 1999's With or Without You, a Belfast-set comedy starring Christopher Eccleston, about a couple trying desperately to conceive, who each have past loves re-enter their lives.
That same year, he also released Wonderland, which marked a shift in style for Winterbottom. Its handheld photography and naturalistic dialogue drew comparisons to Robert Altman. Starring Gina McKee, Shirley Henderson, Molly Parker, John Simm, Ian Hart and Stuart Townsend, it is the story of three sisters and their extended family over Guy Fawkes Day weekend in London. It featured an orchestral score by minimalist composer Michael Nyman, who would become a frequent collaborator with Winterbottom.
Winterbottom's biggest-budgeted film up to that point, at $20 million, his 2000 film The Claim was an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge set in 1860s California. Shot in the wilds of Canada, it was not a financial success and proved an ordeal to make, with Winterbottom himself getting frostbite. Many of the production difficulties, including unsuccessful attempts to cast Madonna, were explained to the public on the film's unusually frank official website.
24 Hour Party People, released in 2001, documents the anarchic, drug and sex-fueled rise and fall of Factory Records and the music scene in Manchester from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. It would be the first of many collaborations between Winterbottom and actor Steve Coogan, who starred as broadcaster/music-mogul Tony Wilson.
His 2002 film In This World depicts the journey of two Afghan refugees from Pakistan, across the Middle East and Europe to Britain, which they try to enter with the help of people smugglers. Shot on digital video at a cost of $2 million, it featured non-professional actors and brought Winterbottom numerous awards, including a Golden Bear and a BAFTA for best film not in the English language.
Code 46, released in 2003, is a sci-fi retelling of the Oedipus myth, in a world where cloning has created people so interrelated that strict laws (the Code 46 of the title) govern human reproduction. The romantic mystery film starred Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. It was shot in Shanghai, Dubai and Rajasthan, which were mixed to create a futuristic multi-ethnic culture.
2004's 9 Songs gained attention as the most sexually explicit film ever to receive a certificate for general release in the UK. It charts a year-long relationship between two lovers, almost exclusively through their sexual interaction and various rock concerts the couple attend. The film became notorious in the UK for its candid scenes of unsimulated sex between the leads, Kieran O'Brien and Margo Stilley.
His 2005 film A Cock and Bull Story, released in the United States and Australia as Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, is an adaptation of the famously "unfilmable" The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, an early novel. The film is a faux documentary about the making of a film of Tristram Shandy. Steve Coogan stars as himself and as Shandy. The film marked the end of Winterbottom's lengthy collaboration with Frank Cottrell Boyce, who chose to be credited under the pseudonym Martin Hardy.
The Road to Guantanamo is a 2006 docu-drama about the "Tipton Three", three British Muslims captured by US forces in Afghanistan who spent two years as prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as alleged enemy combatants. It was shot in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran (which doubled for Cuba) in the autumn of 2005. It premiered at the Berlinale on 14 February 2006. It debuted in the UK on television, on 9 March, as it was co-financed by Channel 4.