Sean Durkin (birthname: Timothy Sean Durkin) is the unusual Canadian-American director/writer/producer who has produced or executive-produced three times as many movies as he has made.
After directing his thesis film for the NYU film school,
Doris (2006), Durkin wrote and directed or produced four more short films through 2010, as well as being producer (with Josh Mond) of writer-director Antonio Campos’s drama,
Afterschool (2008), the first of several features made under the banner of Borderline Films, co-founded by Durkin, Campos, and Mond, and serving as executive producer of Borderline’s drama written and directed by Alistair Banks Griffin,
Two Gates of Sleep (2010), starring Brady Corbet.
Durkin then wrote and directed his highly acclaimed feature debut for Borderline,
Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), co-starring the debuting
Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, Corbet, and Julia Garner, and which won Durkin the Best Director award at the Sundance film festival, and earning a healthy gross of $5.4 million globally. Sean Durkin was a producer on the Borderline production, writer-director Campos’
Simon Killer (2012), co-starring Crobet and Mati Diop (who co-wrote the story with Campos) and premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.
Durkin returned as a producer for fellow Borderline Films co-founder Mond’s feature debut as writer-director, James White (2015), with Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Scott Mescudi, and Ron Livingston. The film won the grand prize in Sundance’s NEXT competition. Between 2016 and 2020, Durkin was executive producer of director-writer Nicolas Pesce’s black-and-white horror movie, The Eyes of My Mother (2016).
He also contributed to the Campos-directed Christine (2016), starring Rebecca Hall, and the writer-director Wayne Roberts’ drama, Katie Says Goodbye (2016), starring Olivia Cooke. Further, he was involved in director-writer Pesce’s horror-thriller adaptation of Ryu Murakami’s
Piercing (2018), co-starring Abbott and Mia Wasikowska, and Dave Franco’s director/writer/producer debut,
The Rental (2020), with Dan Stevens,
Alison Brie, and Sheila Vand.
For the first time, Durkin was director/writer/producer of a movie not made under the Borderline Films banner, his superb drama,
The Nest (2020), co-starring
Jude Law and Carrie Coon, premiering at the Sundance film festival and grossing $2 million worldwide. Sean Durkin returned as director/writer/producer of his biggest movie to date (at a $16 million budget), the biographical sports drama,
The Iron Claw (2023), starring
Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White,
Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, and
Lily James, and released in the U.S. by A24.
