The Artists

Darren Aronofsky

Postcard From Earth Now Live

Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Darren Aronofsky was born and raised in Brooklyn. 

Most recently, he directed the A24 film “The Whale” starring Brendan Fraser, who won a Best Actor Academy Award® for his performance. MacArthur winning playwright Samuel D. Hunter adapted the screenplay from his critically acclaimed play. 

Aronofsky wrote and directed 2017’s “mother!” starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Ed Harris. The New York Times hailed the film calling it a “master class.” Before that, Aronofsky made “Noah,” the 2014 biblical epic starring Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, Jennifer Connelly, and Emma Watson. It was a box office hit and Aronofsky’s largest opening.

In 2010, Aronofsky received a Best Director Academy Award® nomination for the indie box office phenomenon “Black Swan” starring Natalie Portman, who won a Best Actress Academy Award® for her performance. 2008’s “The Wrestler” was touted as a “bravura work of art” by Entertainment Weekly and “a film of authentic beauty and commanding consequence” by the Wall Street Journal. The film won Golden Globes for actor Mickey Rourke and singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen. Aronofsky won the Golden Lion for the best film at the Venice Film Festival. He was the third American director to win that award in the oldest film festival in the world. Previous to that were the acclaimed and award-winning films “The Fountain” (2006), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), and “π” (1998). 

As a producer under his Protozoa label, Aronofsky has been responsible for “Jackie” which garnered three Academy Awards, the documentary “Some Kind of Heaven'' which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, artist Prune Nourry’s docu-memoir “Serendipity” which made its world premiere at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival, “Pacified” which won the Golden Shell top prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival, “Catch the Fair One'' which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival where it won the Audience Award, and the documentary feature “The Territory” which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and won both the Audience Award and Special Jury Award for Craft in the World Cinema Documentary category as well as a Peabody in the Feature Documentary Film Category.

In 2021, he executive produced the six-part National Geographic docu-series, “Welcome to Earth” starring Will Smith as he explores some of the most intriguing and inaccessible corners of the planet. In 2018, Aronofsky executive produced both the Emmy-nominated National Geographic series “One Strange Rock” and the virtual reality experience “SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime.” The VR experience, featuring the voices of Jessica Chastain and Patti Smith, closed a record-breaking deal out of Sundance and won the Golden Lion. 

In 2022, Aronofsky executive produced “The Good Nurse” starring Noah Emmerich, Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, the six-part series “Limitless” starring Chris Hemsworth for National Geographic, “Black Gold” for Paramount+, and “Kindred,” an adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s influential novel, for FX.

Aronofsky is an ardent supporter of the environment and sits on the boards of The Sierra Club and The School for Field Studies. Aronofsky has received humanitarian awards from PETA and The Humane Society of the United States, which honored him with its inaugural Humane Filmmaker Award.