Charlie Kaufman is an American director born in New York City, widely regarded as one of the most inventive screenwriters in American cinema before turning to directing his own singularly strange, introspective films. Already celebrated as the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman made his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York, an extraordinarily ambitious and melancholic examination of mortality and artistic obsession following a theater director building an ever-expanding replica of New York inside a warehouse. Anomalisa, a stop-motion animated film examining crushing loneliness and monotony, extended his fascination with existential despair rendered through inventive formal means, while I'm Thinking of Ending Things showed his continued interest in unreliable narrative and psychological dissolution. Kaufman's uncompromising, deeply introspective examination of identity, mortality, and creative anguish has made him one of the most singular and influential voices in contemporary American cinema. Read more