Nicolas Winding Refn: Career In Four Minutes

Only God Forgives is hitting UK cinemas, and we had a chance to sit down with director Nicolas Winding Refn for an in-depth career chat.

The brutal Bangkok-set thriller sees Ryan Gosling’s Julian, a boxing promoter/drug smuggler, drawn into a ever more violent series of events after his older brother murders a prostitute. Facing the Angel of Vengeance (Vithaya Pansringarm) and his own equally fearsome mother (Kristin Scott Thomas), things gradually go from bad to worse in Lynchian nightmare fashion.

Before Only God Forgives , Winding Refn worked with Gosling on neon-hued crime thriller Drive , one of the coolest films of 2011. As well as the career-defining Pusher trilogy, Winding Refn also called the shots on Bleeder , Fear X , Bronson and Valhalla Rising .

Watch our Career In Four Minutes interview below to get Winding Refn’s unique take on his own movies:

Only God Forgives opens in UK cinemas on 2 August 2013. Read our Only God Forgives review .

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.