Better Things

Duane Hopkins (born 22 July 1973) is an English film director, artist and photographer.

His first short film, Field, made in 2001, premiered at Cannes Film Festival as part of International Critics’ Week. A dark, unblinking tale of rural adolescence, Field went on to win a host of prizes at festivals internationally. Hopkins followed Field in 2003 with his second short film Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, made as part of Film 4 and UK Film Council’s Cinema Extreme scheme for new British filmmaking talent. Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, ‘a study in the articulations and limitations of first love’, premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival where it won Best British Short Film. Like Field it was highly successful; together the two films gathered over 30 international awards.

Hopkins then wrote and directed his debut feature film Better Things. Shot on location in the West Midlands of England, Better Things premiered at International Critics’ Week in Cannes 2008, where it was nominated for the Camera D’Or. A multi-narrative tale of love, yearning and loss amongst the young and old of a small town in rural England, Better Things was widely praised by critics as a film that was both radical and nuanced. It was often noted for its use of cinematic technique and narrative approach to connect themes such as romantic need, the roots of drug addiction, and existential notions of anxiety, purposefully against a contemporary, epic rural backdrop. Variety stated: “Duane Hopkins follows his prize-winning shorts with visually distinctive first feature Better Things. Beautifully shot with cast of eye-catching non-pros… gives a special twist to UK tradition of social realism by juxtaposing the natural and the constructed.” The Guardian wrote that Better Things “has a bold and brilliant insight at its heart” while The Independent argued that “Hopkins is a director with an introspective subtlety uncommon in UK filmmaking”, and in choosing ‘Better Things as its Film of the Month, Sight and Sound wrote “Hopkins’ film depicts, or rather creates, a piece of British social landscape that we have never quite seen before”. Le Monde made Better Things its film of the week, comparing Hopkins’ work to “the abstract violence of Alan Clarke, and the lyrical harshness of Bill Douglas…Hopkins clearly has a lot in common with such directors: he uses a harsh metaphysical darkness and an acute sense of formal composition.”.

Hopkins has been described as being at the centre of an emergent ‘British New Wave’ alongside directors like Steve McQueen, with Better Things distinguished “by its technical and stylistic approaches to typical problems of British realism”. His film work has been noted for its precise compositions and technical rigour, and for its poetic cinematic rendering of realist subject matter, characters and environments. —wikipedia