Abel Ferrara

The Profile

Abel Ferrara (born 1951, New York City) is an American director and screenwriter known for gritty, morally charged films including The Driller Killer (1979), Ms. 45 (1981), King of New York (1990), The Bad Lieutenant (1992), The Addiction (1995), The Funeral (1996), Mary (2005), Pasolini (2014), and Siberia (2020).

American filmmaker active since 1977; early credit as "Jimmy Laine"; recurrent themes of sin, guilt, redemption, and spiritual crisis; frequent collaborations include Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken, and Harvey Keitel; has publicly identified as Buddhist.

Reviews highlight Ferrara’s relentless gaze on guilt, faith, and violence across New York noirs and spiritual dramas. Keitel and Walken earn high praise; Dafoe anchors later works like Pasolini and Siberia. Themes of redemption, determinism, and moral rot recur. Overall tone: intense, unsettling, and lauded.