Kevin Macdonald

Kevin Macdonald is a Scottish director, actor and screenwriter. He was born in Glasgow in 1967.

Kevin is a grandson of British film maker Emeric Pressburg.

Macdonald’s first film was about his grandfather. At the beginning it was entitled “The Life and Death of the Screenwriter”, however after small changes the title was changed to “The making of an Englishman” (1995).

Kevin created a lot of biographical films such as “Chaplin’s Goliath” (1996), "The Moving World of George Rickey" (1997), "A Brief History of Errol Morris" (2000) and "Being Mick" (2001).

His most successful film was entitled “One day in September”, produced in 1999. It was a documentary film about the murder of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Game in Munich in 1972.  The film’s most important scene is an interview with Jamal Al-Gaszeyem who is the last witness of those events.

Since 1972 Jamal lives in hiding because he believes that Israeli’s government is chasing him for the hijacking.

What’s interesting, the interview with Jamal was recorded in Arabic language. About what was recorded Kevin learned after coming back to London and translating the interview.

The film won the Oscar in 2000 for the best documentary.

In my opinion the director must be really interesting person. Producing only documentary films requires a lot of courage because I think that many people prefer action movies instead of documents. It is harder to create a good documentary than a popular film advertised by movie stars.

I believe that the ‘real cinema’ must be Kevin’s passion.