movies

Nicolas Winding Refn on Making of ‘Drive’: “Most Everyone Hated It”

Published

21 hours ago

July 21, 2026

Fifteen years later, Drive is widely regarded as one of the defining films of the 21st century, turning Ryan Gosling into a screen icon and cementing Nicolas Winding Refn as one of contemporary cinema’s boldest auteurs.

According to Refn, though, almost nobody believed in it while it was being made. “Most everyone hated it,” Refn tells It Happened in Hollywood. “Up until the premiere in Cannes, there were people that wanted their name off the movie.”

Before revisiting Drive, Refn discussed Her Private Hell, his first feature in nearly a decade. The film follows a young woman navigating a futuristic, neon-drenched urban landscape and marks the director’s return after a near-fatal medical emergency in which, he says, he was dead for more than 20 minutes.

“It made me very aware of time,” Refn says. “If you’re going to use your time, choose it well because once it’s over, it’s over.”

Refn described Her Private Hell as a reaction against algorithm-driven entertainment, arguing that cinema should challenge audiences rather than simply satisfy them. “Cinema, it’s not just a place for entertainment,” he said. “It’s a place for sharing dreams.”

The film drew a sharply divided response at Cannes, something Refn seems to welcome. As he notes on the podcast, even Drive, now considered a modern classic, was once dismissed by many of the people making it.

The Cannes premiere changed everything. Refn won best director, and Drive was on its way to becoming one of the defining films of its era. But getting there involved a collapsed Harrison Ford project, an emotional breakthrough in Ryan Gosling’s car, and a commune-like living situation for cast and crew at a Hollywood house Refn insists was haunted.

Refn says Gosling first reached out because he admired his earlier work. At the time, however, the Danish director was developing a Paul Schrader script that would have starred Ford.

“I’d been working on a movie with Harrison Ford where he was supposed to die,” Refn says. “It was a beautiful script by Paul Schrader. But while I was developing it, he decided that he didn’t want to die. And it was the whole foundation of the movie.”

Refn’s first meeting with Gosling didn’t seem much more encouraging. Refn says he was battling the flu and “high as a kite” on American cold medicine.

“We had a very peculiar conversation where we didn’t really talk,” he recalls. “We didn’t look at each other because I couldn’t move my body … It was like a blind date gone terrible.”

After dinner, Gosling drove him back to Santa Monica. Then REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” came over the radio.

“I’m a sucker for a great rock ballad,” Refn says. “I start to sing the lyrics … and I just start crying. Tears are rolling down my cheeks.”

In that instant, everything clicked.

“I turned to Ryan and I screamed very loudly, because the music was so loud,” he recalls. “‘I got it! I know what we’re going to make! We’re going to make a film about a man who drives around at night in a car listening to music because that’s his emotional relief.’ Ryan looked at me and said, ‘I’m in.’”

Although James Sallis’ 2005 novel Drive had already been adapted by screenwriter Hossein Amini, Refn says the version they ultimately made took shape through an unusual live-work process.

Amini moved into the Hollywood house Refn was renting while they continued rewriting the script.

Carrie Mulligan stopped by for what was supposed to be a meeting.

“The minute she walked through the door, I was like, ‘It’s you. You are her,’” Refn says. “For some reason she ended up also living at the house.”

Editor Matt Newman also moved in, cutting the film downstairs while Refn and Amini continued rewriting upstairs.

“It was like a real, what I would imagine the ’70s would’ve been like — without cocaine,” says Refn.

Refn eventually became convinced the house where everyone was living and working was haunted.

“I was super afraid of the house,” he adds. “Certainly. It was haunted.”

So unnerved was he that producer Adam Siegel would sometimes come over simply so he wouldn’t have to spend the night alone.

The screenplay kept evolving after production had already begun.

“I handed in the revised version of the script on the first day of photography,” he says.

By then, he’d stripped away dialogue, backstory and much of the conventional crime movie structure. Asked why audiences never really learn who the Driver is, Refn offers a simple answer: “You’re not supposed to.”

When executives finally saw what he’d made, they were baffled.

“Some people higher up went, ‘What’s this?’” he recalls. “I said, ‘Well, it’s a Nicolas Winding Refn film.’”

Many of Drive‘s most memorable moments also emerged during production. Refn says the Driver gradually became less of a traditional action hero than a mythic figure. “The Driver is a kind of alter ego,” he says. “The Driver is a superhero. He has a mysterious past and he protects innocence.” That realization inspired the now-iconic satin jacket with the gold scorpion on the back, an idea Refn traced to Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising.

“I wanted him to have an animal,” he says. “Like a superhero.”

The film’s unforgettable elevator sequence also wasn’t in the script. Refn says he wanted Gosling and Mulligan to share “the kiss they never had” before the Driver transforms into the violent figure he was always destined to become.

Preparing for the notorious head-crushing scene, he even called filmmaker Gaspar Noé for advice.

“He gave me a long, complicated description of how he made it,” Refn says, referring to Noé’s own crushed head in 2005’s Irreversible. “I realized I didn’t have the time nor the money to duplicate that.”

Today, Drive (and its synth-heavy soundtrack) is considered a modern classic, and Refn says his creative bond with Gosling hasn’t faded. “I felt very much that we were one person,” he says. “I still think, in a way, we are one person.”

And if he has his way, there is still one chapter left.

“We have one more in us together,” Refn says. “We’ve done two. Now we’ve got to do the third one.”

Listen to the full conversation on It Happened in Hollywood and subscribe to the podcast for more conversations about landmark films with the people who made them.

movies

BAFTA Adds AI Clause To Submission Rules

Published

11 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

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BAFTA has once again tweaked its submission rules.

In a series of new rules announced this morning, the headline additions include the expansion of the Outstanding British Film Longlist and the addition of a new clause on films created using generative AI.

The new AI law reads: “Where the use of Generative AI or other digital tools is relevant to the consideration of the work, BAFTA reserves the right to request additional information regarding the nature of such use and the extent of human creative involvement.”

BAFTA said the new AI clause will also be added to the rulebooks for its other 2027 awards. The organisation said the rule was created following consultation with the industry and with the aim of “reaffirming that the Awards recognise and reward outstanding human creative achievement.”

The Outstanding British Film Longlist has been expanded from 15 to 20 films. The category will retain 10 nominations, with five chosen by the membership vote and five by the nominating jury. The Outstanding British Film category was first introduced in 1947. Last year, Chloé Zhao took the award with Hamnet. Other previous winners include Edward Berger (Conclave), Jonathan Glazer (The Zone Of Interest), and Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin).

Elsewhere, the Children’s & Family Film category has been renamed the Family Film category. BAFTA said the name “better reflects the types of films eligible for consideration and provides greater clarity for entrants, voters, and jurors, while the eligibility criteria and voting process remain unchanged.”

The 80th edition of the BAFTA Film Awards will take place on Sunday 21 February 2027 in London.

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Could Tilly Norwood Ever Win a BAFTA? Film Awards Rules Are Firm — No

Published

28 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

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AI “actor” Tilly Norwood will never be eligible for a BAFTA Film Award, the British Academy has confirmed, amid updates to its rulebook and voting processes.

BAFTA is now reserving the right to ask for more information regarding the use of AI and “the extent of human creative involvement” in work submitted for Film Awards consideration. Following “industry consultation,” BAFTA has clarified its approach to AI and on Wednesday said its Awards are “presented annually to recognise, honour and reward individuals for outstanding human achievement in originating, shaping and realising the final artistic outcome, regardless of the tools used to bring this work to life.”

Where the use of generative AI or other digital tools is relevant to the consideration of films, BAFTA can request additional information.

“[Artificial intelligence] is obviously evolving at a very fast pace,” executive director of awards and content at BAFTA, Emma Baehr, told The Hollywood Reporter in a media briefing about the changes. “We’re aware that AI and digital tools are used in some areas more than others. But we felt that it was very important that we expanded that and acknowledged that if anything comes up, we have the right to request further information because ultimately BAFTA is about recognizing human achievement.”

While things may change again next year, Baehr said the language used in the updated rulebook allows the film committee at BAFTA to “dig into” specific uses of AI ahead of the longlist and nominations announcements. There isn’t a specific percentage or “exact science” that would rule out an AI-aided film from contention for a BAFTA, but Baehr maintains the focus is on human creativity.

For example, THR asked, what would the 2027 approach be to Adrien Brody’s BAFTA and Oscar-winning role in The Brutalist? (The actor was said to have used AI to help with his Hungarian accent in Brady Corbet’s 2024 film.) Baehr responded: “[The updates] would rule out an AI actor. It’s going to be a human that collects a BAFTA. We’re never going to allow an AI actor [to win a BAFTA]. But we never really comment on what’s happened in the past because the rules are the rules for that year, and every year it changes. So Adrien Brody was eligible; he won. We celebrated that win, and that was within that year in that rulebook. So, as we said, AI is moving so fast, but we have to go back to what we’ve already said about human creativity, and that is the essence of it. We want to celebrate that.”

When asked for confirmation that Norwood — the AI “actor” who last year plunged the industry into crisis around the ethicality of AI performers, and who is about to make her feature film debut — will not ever be eligible for a BAFTA, Baehr was firm: “No. No. That’s not human.”

Baehr and Deirdre Hopkins, head of film at BAFTA, declined to comment on the possibility of one day introducing a craft category entirely devoted to AI-generated projects.

Among other changes are BAFTA’s expansion of the outstanding British film category, taking the longlist from 15 to 20 films to “better showcase the depth and range of British filmmaking and create a wider pool of British titles for consideration.” The category will retain 10 nominations, with five chosen by the membership vote and five by the nominating jury.

BAFTA is also broadening participation in the performance categories’ voting process by inviting Casting Chapter members to vote alongside the Acting Chapter in the longlisting and nomination rounds. As part of the update, the longlisting jury will now select five performers on the longlist. These changes will bring “additional industry expertise to these categories and support wider recognition of acting talent.”

In other news, the children’s & family film category will be renamed family film, bringing the category title
into “closer alignment with its focus on films that appeal across generations.” The new name is said to
better reflect the types of films eligible for consideration and provides greater clarity for entrants, voters, and jurors, while the eligibility criteria and voting process remain unchanged.

Entries for the 2027 BAFTA Film Awards are open from Wednesday, July 22. The longlist will be announced on Jan. 7, 2027, the nominations on Jan. 29, and the ceremony on Feb. 21.

movies

Venice Giornate Degli Autori Unveils 2026 Selection

Published

2 hours ago

July 22, 2026

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Venice parallel section Giornate degli Autori (GdA) has unveiled a female focused lineup for its 2026 edition.

Drawn from 1,036 submissions from 114 countries, the lineup features 25 world premieres, of which 13 are Italian and 14 directed by women; with 10 films in competition, one closing film out of competition, five special events, and a showcase of nine titles in Venetian Nights (scroll down for the full section).

Hungarian director Lili Horvát’s first English-language film My Notes on Mars will open the edition. The sci-fi romance stars Mackenzie Davis as a scientist who vanishes during a hiking trip to reappear on the day of her own memorial service with no memory of the life she has lived in between. Rupert Friend co-stars.

Horvát previously made waves with Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, about a talented surgeon who ditches her career for a man who then claims to have never met her before. That film debuted in the GdA’s 2020 edition and then went on to win numerous awards including a Golden Hugo in Chicago’s New Directors Competition.

Léa Domenach’s A Man’s Skin, described as a queer and feminist musical comedy set in the Italian Renaissance, and featuring Pomme, Karin Viard, and Catherine Deneuve in the cast, will close the section.

Horvát’s My Notes on Mars is among 10 films being showcased in competition.

Further contenders include Polish-born Australia-based filmmaker Kuba Dorabialski’s Agata the Writer, starring Mia Wasikowska as an Australian writer who travels to Sarajevo to work on a novel about the Bosnian war and is forced to acknowledge the limits of her own artistic vision.

In other competition highlights include Post Tenebras Lux actress Nathalia Acevedo directorial debut Salón de Belleza. Adapted from the radical novel by Mario Bellatin, it unfolds in a beauty salon in a city ravaged by a mysterious disease which becomes a refuge for the afflicted as they linger between life and death. Belgian multi-disciplinary artist Sam Louwyck, and Erwan Kepoa Falé co-star.

Established directors in the mix include Robert Guédiguian with A Woman Today. Newcomer Marilou Aussilloux stars as a young woman grappling with the distance between her own idea of freedom and the contradictions of a present day still ridden with violence and inequality, alongside the director’s longtime collaborators Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, and Gérard Meylan.

This year’s jury for the GdA Director’s Award, which includes a cash prize of €20,000 to be split between the director and international distributor, comprises Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón, the Italian director and editor Sara Fgaier, and Hania Mroué, director of Beirut’s landmark Metropolis arthouse cinema.

In other awards, audiences for the GdA screenings at the Sala Perla will decide the Audience Award while the Europa Cinemas jury will choose the winner of the label from among the European films at Giornate degli Autori.

The Special Events lineup – featuring the documentary, autobiography, historical film, and experimentation, includes Francesca Archibugi’s Carla Lonzi, A Feminist Story, exploring the life and times of one of the most radical feminist voices of 20th-century Italy.

In other highlights beyond the main competition, Claire Denis and Mona Fastvold are the guests of honor of the Miu Miu Women’s Tales program. The 15th edition of the initiative in partnership with GdA will see the filmmakers share career lessons in on-stage conversations.

GdA’s 23rd edition is dedicated to the sidebar’s founder and longtime champion, film critic and festival exec Giorgio Gosetti who died suddenly and unexpectedly in March.

“This edition carries with it a deep void and a deep gratitude,” declares Artistic Director Gaia Furrer. “We owe to Giorgio the very idea for this free arena we inhabit, along with his faith in the new directions of cinema and his stubborn, loving determination to build and consolidate, year after year, a community of men and women filmmakers and audiences. This year, Giornate springs from the desire to honor this legacy by continuing to do what Giorgio taught us: seek out, discover, go wrong, become passionate about, and believe in cinema and in those who make it happen.”

The edition, will run alongside the Venice Film Festival from September 2 to 12, with its activities based mainly in Casa degli Autori and the Sala Laguna on the Venice Lido.

OFFICIAL SELECTION

IN COMPETITION

SADNESS SOMETIMES, OTHER TIMES REVOLT
by María Aparicio
Argentina, Spain, 2026

AGATA THE WRITER
by Kuba Dorabialski
Australia, 2026

BALCANICA – debut feature
by Nicola Sorcinelli
Italy, Serbia, Croatia, 2026

CAMOUFLAGE – debut feature
by Mykyta Gibalenko
Germany, 2026

DEAR AJAYI
by Damilola Orimogunje
Nigeria, Germany, 2026, 120’

I PLANT MY HAND IN THE GARDEN – debut feature
by Boris Hadžija & Hoda Taheri
Germany, Serbia, U.S.

The Indies – debut feature
by Pauline Julier, Nicolas Chapoulier
Switzerland, Spain, 2026

MY NOTES ON MARS – opening film
by Lili Horvát
Hungary, Austria

SALÓN DE BELLEZA – debut feature
by Nathalia Acevedo
Mexico, France, 2026

A WOMAN TODAY
by Robert Guédiguian
France, Italy, 2026