An auteur is defined as a film director who influences their films so much that they rank as their author. Some classic auteurs include Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan; due to their extremely characteristic directorial traits.
My chosen auteur candidate is Susanne Bier. She is a director, screenwriter and producer from Denmark, who is best known for films such as Bird Box, Brothers, After the Wedding and In a Better World. She is also the director of the HBO minseries The Undoing and the AMC miniseries The Night Manager.
Her typical genres includes dramas, romance, thrillers and occasionally horror and war. Films such as Bird Box (2018) use tension to build atmosphere, as well as interwoven storylines of past and present to create a thrilling mystery. Bier’s visual flair in other films such as Brothers uses a combination of stylistic choices such as Dogme light and various small montages and extreme close-ups.
However, in my opinion, I think that Susanne Bier cannot be considered an auteur due to the fact that her films do not particularly make use of unique and creative cinematography and her stylistic choices do not particularly stand out from the crowd. Additionally, she is not the writer for many of her films, such as Bird Box which was based upon a novel of the same name written by Josh Malerman.
Otis Morley’s A-Level Film Studies Blog 