Nicolas Roeg

Directing

Nicolas Roeg

Born — Died

1928-08-15 — 2018-11-23

Place of birth

London, England, UK

Known for

Directing

Credits

41 titles

Nicolas Jack Roeg (15 August 1928 – 23 November 2018) was an English film director and cinematographer, best known for directing Performance (1970), Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Bad Timing (1980), and The Witches (1990). Making his directorial debut 23 years after his entry into the film business, Roeg quickly became known for an idiosyncratic visual and narrative style, characterized by the use of disjointed and disorienting editing.

Known for

The Witches poster
7.0

While staying at a hotel in England with his grandmother, Helga, a young boy named Luke inadvertently spies on a convention of witches. The Grand High Witch reveals a plan to turn all children into mice via a magical formula. When they discover the eavesdropper, the witches test the formula on him. Now, with the help of Helga and hotel manager Mr Stringer, Luke the mouse must fight back against the witches.

The Witches

1990

Don't Look Now poster
6.9

While grieving a terrible loss, a married couple meet two mysterious sisters, one of whom gives them a message sent from the afterlife.

Don't Look Now

1973

The Man Who Fell to Earth poster
6.5

Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien who has come to Earth in search of water to save his home planet. Aided by lawyer Oliver Farnsworth, Thomas uses his knowledge of advanced technology to create profitable inventions. While developing a method to transport water, Thomas meets Mary-Lou, a quiet hotel clerk, and begins to fall in love with her. Just as he is ready to leave Earth, Thomas is intercepted by the U.S. government, and his entire plan is threatened.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

1976

Cold Heaven poster
4.3

While on holiday in Mexico, unhappily married Marie Davenport summons the courage to tell her unknowing husband, Alex, that she is leaving him for her lover. But before she delivers the news, Alex is involved in a boating accident – and Marie is unsure whether he's dead or not. Faced with supernatural events, Marie turns back to Catholicism and seeks the help of Father Niles and Sister Martha.

Cold Heaven

1992

Hollywood U.K.: British Cinema in the Sixties poster
7.0

Five programmes that trace a remarkable decade in British film-making through interviews with its stars and directors.

Hollywood U.K.: British Cinema in the Sixties

1993

Bad Timing poster
6.6

Alex Linden is a psychiatrist living in Vienna who meets Milena Flaherty though a mutual friend. Though Alex is quite a bit older than Milena, he's attracted to her young, carefree spirit. Despite the fact that Milena is already married, their friendship quickly turns into a deeply passionate love affair that threatens to overtake them both. When Milena ends up in the hospital from an overdose, Alex is taken into custody by Inspector Netusil.

Bad Timing

1980

Film credits

2010s · 5 titles

2000s · 5 titles

Series credits

Behind the camera

The Witches poster
7.0

While staying at a hotel in England with his grandmother, Helga, a young boy named Luke inadvertently spies on a convention of witches. The Grand High Witch reveals a plan to turn all children into mice via a magical formula. When they discover the eavesdropper, the witches test the formula on him. Now, with the help of Helga and hotel manager Mr Stringer, Luke the mouse must fight back against the witches.

The Witches

1990

Don't Look Now poster
6.9

While grieving a terrible loss, a married couple meet two mysterious sisters, one of whom gives them a message sent from the afterlife.

Don't Look Now

1973

The Man Who Fell to Earth poster
6.5

Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien who has come to Earth in search of water to save his home planet. Aided by lawyer Oliver Farnsworth, Thomas uses his knowledge of advanced technology to create profitable inventions. While developing a method to transport water, Thomas meets Mary-Lou, a quiet hotel clerk, and begins to fall in love with her. Just as he is ready to leave Earth, Thomas is intercepted by the U.S. government, and his entire plan is threatened.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

1976

Cold Heaven poster
4.3

While on holiday in Mexico, unhappily married Marie Davenport summons the courage to tell her unknowing husband, Alex, that she is leaving him for her lover. But before she delivers the news, Alex is involved in a boating accident – and Marie is unsure whether he's dead or not. Faced with supernatural events, Marie turns back to Catholicism and seeks the help of Father Niles and Sister Martha.

Cold Heaven

1992

Bad Timing poster
6.6

Alex Linden is a psychiatrist living in Vienna who meets Milena Flaherty though a mutual friend. Though Alex is quite a bit older than Milena, he's attracted to her young, carefree spirit. Despite the fact that Milena is already married, their friendship quickly turns into a deeply passionate love affair that threatens to overtake them both. When Milena ends up in the hospital from an overdose, Alex is taken into custody by Inspector Netusil.

Bad Timing

1980

Performance. poster
6.8

In underworld terms, Chas Devlin is a 'performer,' a gangster with a talent for violence and intimidation. Turner is a reclusive rock superstar. When Chas and Turner meet, their worlds collide—and the impact is both exotic and explosive.

Performance.

1970

Heart of Darkness poster
5.8

A trading company manager travels up an African river to find a missing outpost head and discovers the depth of evil in humanity's soul.

Heart of Darkness

1994

Eureka poster
5.3

After striking it rich on a large gold strike, a prospector retires to the quiet life on a Caribbean island but ends up coping with an alcoholic wife, a headstrong daughter, and Miami mobsters who want to build a casino.

Eureka

1983

Full Body Massage poster
5.6

Nina, an art dealer, has her weekly massage appointment and is surprised to find out her usual masseur, Douglas, has sent a replacement named Fitch. The pair develop an easy rapport during the session, with talk about past relationships. As Nina lies topless on the massage table, Fitch also takes time to explain various massage techniques, including those used by Hopi medicine men.

Full Body Massage

1999

Walkabout poster
7.3

Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.

Walkabout

1971

Two Deaths poster
5.6

While a brutal revolution rampages just outside his mansion, pleasure-seeking doctor Daniel Pavenic hosts a genteel dinner party. When asked about a photograph of a mysterious woman, Pavenic reveals the sordid details of his erotic obsession with the woman, his aging servant Ana Puscasu, and his attempts to dominate her psychologically. As the evening progresses, Pavenic's guests reveal their own dark secrets as well.

Two Deaths

1996

Castaway poster
6.3

Middle-aged Gerald Kingsland advertises in a London paper for a female companion to spend a year with him on a desert island. Young Lucy Irving takes a chance on contacting him, but once on the island, things prove a lot less idyllic than in the movies. Gradually, it becomes clear that it is Lucy who has the desire and the strength to try and see the year through.

Castaway

1986

Sweet Bird of Youth poster
5.5

Tennessee William’s masterful melodrama about an aging movie star who, appalled by her own image on the screen, flees from her movie premiere and goes into seclusion, becoming entangled with a much younger hotel masseur and resident gigolo.

Sweet Bird of Youth

1989

Aria poster
5.5

Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound, and is an interpretation of the particular aria.

Aria

1987

Aria poster
5.5

Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound, and is an interpretation of the particular aria.

Aria

1987

Insignificance poster
6.4

Four 1950s icons meet in the same hotel room, and two of them discover more in common between them than they ever anticipated.

Insignificance

1985

Hotel Paradise poster
4.3

A bride-to-be wakes up one morning next to a man chained to the bed, but cannot remember what happened the night before.

Hotel Paradise

1995

No artwork available
NR

Thriller-drama about eight losers who will have to deal with a new life in which apparently they are the only people alive.

Zero

2011

Iceberg poster
NR

With its simple and iconic imagery this was public information film at its most sensational: expensive special effects and high-concept production design brought public information filmmaking into the realm of state-of-the-art corporate advertising. The film was the result of a £5 million cinema and television campaign aimed at combating the growing spread of HIV and AIDS. With restrictions around the overt promotion of condom use on television and a growing chorus of moral campaigners promulgating their own agenda, the straightforward and doom-laded approach was probably the only viable option for campaign mastermind Sammy Harari. But the result was a hard-hitting and memorable campaign which undoubtedly fulfilled its brief of pervading public consciousness. There are two versions; the one shown in cinemas did not feature John Hurt's famous voiceover.

Iceberg

1987

Track 29 poster
5.6

Years after a desperate teenage Linda gives up her baby for adoption, she finds herself face-to-face with Martin, a young man claiming to be her long-lost son. Linda embraces Martin and in him finds a welcome reprieve from her unhappy marriage to the neglectful Henry. But soon Martin grows violent and becomes obsessed with Henry -- a philandering man whose only offspring is an expansive model train set that devours his waking hours.

Track 29

1988

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Demons of Deception poster
5.5

Indy's work with the Belgian Army takes him to the front lines of Verdun in 1916, where officers' callous stupidity sends thousands of men to their deaths for virtually no territorial gain. In Paris, Indy falls in love with the seductive German spy Mata Hari, only to suffer the pains of deceit.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Demons of Deception

1999

Death Drums Along the River poster
5.3

A British colonial policeman in Africa investigates a murder in a hospital up river.

Death Drums Along the River

1963

The Film That Buys the Cinema poster
NR

A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.

The Film That Buys the Cinema

2014

Puffball poster
3.8

Architect Liffey moves to the Irish countryside with her American fiancé, Richard, to refurbish a long-abandoned cottage. Their neighbours are elderly Molly Tucker and her adult daughter, Mabs, who has three daughters but wants a son. After Richard returns to New York City, Liffey learns she's pregnant, which angers Molly and Mabs. Convinced Liffey has the baby her daughter deserves, Molly tries to use black magic to eliminate the fetus.

Puffball

2007

Glastonbury Fayre poster
6.7

In the Summer of 1971 the Glastonbury legend was born when the organisers decided to try and create a festival that would be a forerunner for an 'alternative and utopian society'. The festival encompassed Midsummer's Day, and in true medieval tradition, the area of Worthy Farm, Pilton was given over to music, dance, poetry, theatre, spontaneous entertainment and nudity.

Glastonbury Fayre

1972

No artwork available
9.0

This collaboration between Roeg and Adrian Utley of Portishead was filmed as part of the BBC’s Sound On Film series

The Sound of Claudia Schiffer

2000

Monolith poster
NR

John Hurt narrates this highly charged and doom-laden public information film from the 1987 AIDS awareness campaign. A cliff-face explodes in slow motion; an industrial drill bores into a huge block of rock; the word 'AIDS' is chiselled into the polished surface of a granite headstone and a "Don't Die of Ignorance" leaflet drops onto the surface along with an elegiac bouquet of white lilies. The solemnity of the accompanying voice-over quells any vestiges of ambiguity.

Monolith

1987