James Hawes

James Hawes has been making waves in the film and TV world for a while now. He kicked off and ran the whole first season of ‘Slow Horses’ over on AppleTV+, setting up its vibe and direction from the jump. Recently, his feature debut, ‘One Life,’ landed at both TIFF and LFF in September 2023, and it’s rolling out in the UK and US in early 2024. Big names in the cast too—Sir Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Flynn, Helena Bonham Carter, Jonathan Pryce—telling the wild true story of a rescue operation saving refugee kids from pre-WWII Prague. It’s one of those movies that actually deserves the “based on a true story” tagline. Hawes isn’t new to working with A-listers or prestige TV, not by a long shot. He’s one of only three directors trusted to handle multiple episodes of ‘Black Mirror’—not just any episodes, but the big, feature-length finales in 2016 and 2018 (‘Hated In The Nation’ and ‘Smithereens’). That’s no small feat considering how many directors would kill for that gig. He snagged his first BAFTA nom with ‘Enid’ back in 2010, plus more nominations for his cast, then took home the Royal Television Society’s best TV movie award in 2015 for ‘The Challenger Disaster.’ He kept the streak going as lead and producing director on HBO’s ‘Snowpiercer’ in 2019, which blew up globally on HBO Max and Netflix. ‘Slow Horses’ is actually the sixth out of seven series he’s launched that’s turned into a multi-season hit. The guy’s got a serious track record. And he’s not slowing down—he started shooting his next film, ‘The Amateur,’ starring Rami Malek, for Twentieth Century Studios in summer 2023.