Alan J. Pakula

Alan J. Pakula (1928-1998) graduated in dramatic arts from Yale University. He started his film career at Warner Brothers, then at the beginning of the fifties he became an assistant producer at Paramount. He eventually worked his way up to producer, and he and director Robert Mulligan founded their own production company. Together they created the popular and critical favourite To Kill a Mockingbird based on Harper Lee?s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. His directorial debut came with The Sterile Cuckoo (1969). The thriller Klute (1971) launched a free-floating series of films connected by their critical portrayal of the interconnection between the spheres of power and crime. The peak point of Pakula?s film work proved to be Sophie?s Choice (1982), an adaptation of William Styron?s novel of growing up and nightmarish Nazi trauma. Other well-known titles include the thriller Presumed Innocent (1990) with Harrison Ford and The Pelican Brief (1993) with Julia Roberts. In The Devil?s Own (1997) he pitted an IRA gunman against a fair-minded New York cop.

MFF Karlovy Vary