Creator

Roland Joffé

Roland Joffé is a British film and television director who directed The Killing Fields.

Roland Joffé is a British film and television director, producer and screenwriter whose first feature was The Killing Fields (1984).[1]

Theater and television

Joffé studied English and drama at Manchester University.[2] After university he staged weekly serial plays in schools, and in the mid-1960s he directed for the Young Vic repertory company.[3][1] He became the youngest director ever to work at London's National Theatre.[1][2]

After directing at the National Theatre, he moved into television through Granada, Thames and the BBC.[4] He directed four episodes of Coronation Street in 1973 and 1974.[5] His television work also included The Stars Look Down, the series Bill Brand and several Play for Today films, and he became known for hard-hitting political dramas.[4][1] His Play for Today films included The Spongers and United Kingdom, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA.[4] In a 1986 interview he said he thought one of his English television films, about a woman bringing up her child, had won the Prix Italia in 1978.[3]

The Killing Fields

The producer David Puttnam gave Joffé Bruce Robinson's screenplay for The Killing Fields. Joffé knew little of Cambodia or the Khmer Rouge, but he wrote Puttnam a detailed three-page assessment of the script, and Puttnam chose him to direct.[6][7] The film follows the New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg and his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran before and after the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975.[1][3] Joffé saw it as a story of friendship, not only of war, and he wanted Cambodian voices and an inner truth in the film.[7][2]

Sam Waterston played Schanberg, and Haing S. Ngor played Dith Pran.[1] Joffé saw Ngor's gift for acting when he heard him tell of his own experiences in Cambodia. At the audition he asked Ngor to reenact an escape from an operating room as the Khmer Rouge approached, and he urged him to take the role for Cambodia.[6][7] He cast many actors with little film experience through group improvisation exercises in his office.[6] He worked with the cinematographer Chris Menges and the production designer Roy Walker, and the scenes of Khmer Rouge execution sites were filmed in the countryside outside Bangkok, standing in for the places where the Khmer Rouge killed people and left their remains.[6]

The Killing Fields received seven Academy Award nominations, among them Best Director for Joffé, and won three: Best Supporting Actor for Ngor, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing.[7][1] Joffé was also nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Director in 1985, and for a BAFTA.[4][8]

Later films

A man in a grey jacket gestures while speaking into a microphone, seated before a green festival backdrop.
Roland Joffé at a press conference of the Sochi International Film Festival, 2017.

Joffé's second feature, The Mission (1986), is set among the Jesuit missions of South America in the eighteenth century, with Robert De Niro as a mercenary who becomes a priest.[3][2] It won the Palme d'Or and the C.S.T. Prize at Cannes in 1986,[9] and it brought Joffé his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director.[1] His later films include Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), City of Joy (1992), filmed in India, The Scarlet Letter (1995), Vatel (2000), Captivity (2007), There Be Dragons (2011) and The Forgiven (2017), with Forest Whitaker as Archbishop Desmond Tutu.[1][5] In television he directed Texas Rising (2015) and an episode of Sun Records.[5][10]

He storyboards his films and plans in detail, then improvises once a scene's shape and purpose are set.[2] With actors he uses games, stories, letters and dialogue rather than psychological notes.[5]

Cambodia

After The Killing Fields, Joffé became involved with Cambodian charities, and as of 2014 he still visited Cambodia often. With friends he founded the Cambodia Trust, which makes artificial limbs and runs a school of prosthetics.[7] He was the official patron of the 2011 Cambodia Volleyball World Cup, held from July 23 to 29 at the National Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh.[4]

Recognition

A stone plaque with a star bearing his name and the year 2012, and two handprints below.
Roland Joffé's star on the Avenue of Stars in Kraków, 2012.
  • Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Director, and a BAFTA nomination, for The Killing Fields (1985)[7][8][4]
  • Palme d'Or and C.S.T. Prize, Cannes Film Festival, for The Mission (1986)[9]
  • Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Director, for The Mission (1987)[1][8]

Works


See also

References 10
  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 TV Insider, Roland Joffé (undated)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 100pages.me, Film writing: Roland Joffé
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 BOMB Magazine, Roland Joffé by Tom Bird (1986)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Monaco International Film Festival, Angel Awards Jury 2013: Roland Joffé (2013)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Film Talk, Roland Joffé: "I try to take the audience to an emotional place..." (July 31, 2017)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 The Guardian, Roland Joffé and Julian Sands: how we made The Killing Fields (November 10, 2014)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Los Angeles Times, The legacy of the 'Killing Fields,' 30 years later (January 30, 2014)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Golden Globes, Roland Joffé (undated)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Festival de Cannes, The Mission (undated)
  10. ↑ TVmaze, Sun Records, Rising Sun: Guest Crew (undated)
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This page was last edited on 22 October 2026, at 01:19.