SPOTLIGHT March 2025: Mona Fastvold, Filmmaker, Oscar Contender, THE BRUTALIST

This awards season has brought filmmaker Mona Fastvold newfound fame for her work on The Brutalist, the highly acclaimed, top Oscar contender for which she is credited as screenwriter, along with her writing and life partner Brady Corbet, who also directed the film. In the awards contenders listings, Corbet always gets top billing, but that may be an alphabetizing thing, and in fact, the successful writing duo co-created the script together and have shared Best Original Screenplay nominations from 46 movie awards-voting groups, including eight wins. In ongoing seasonal speculation, award pundits have predicted that the script will receive the top nod to top off the awards season when the Oscars are presented on March 2.

Fastwold and Corbet have been writing partners since they met more than a decade ago, introduced by mutual friend Christopher Abbott, who remains a close associate of the duo’s. Their relationship began as an exclusively professional one, but they now live together and have a child.

Both Fastwold and Brady began their careers as actors, but they were both keenly interested in collaborating to explore other aspects of the art of moviemaking. Exciting creative choices, a bold visual style, an inventive approach to structure, and explorations of relationships and the human experience are part of the Fastvold-Corbet cinematic universe.

Fastwold has described her writing collaboration with Corbet as mutually freeing and comfortable. Tackling different parts of the project, they write at different times of day — she in the early morning and he late at night, and, she says, “We meet somewhere in the middle for revisions. It’s very easy for us to write for one another or for another director. I think also that’s because we both were actors; it’s this idea that you’re lending yourself to someone else’s vision.”

MEET MONA

Mona Fastvold was born on March 7, 1986 in Oslo, Norway, where she grew up in an arts-active family. Her mother, who wrote novels, taught Mona to handwrite an ongoing daily journal — a habit she has, she says, maintained to the present. “I always have a notebook handy,” she says. Her parents were cinephiles who raised her on frequent screenings of Ingmar Bergman films and other classics. Her grandfather was an architect, a mid-century designer (not unlike the main character in The Brutalist) who conversed with her about architectural philosophy and aesthetics.

For young Mona, the pursuit of the arts — particularly of writing and cinema — seemed to be a natural path.

Fastwold’s professional life as an artist began with her childhood acting career when she was just eight years old. When she was eleven, she was cast as a regularly recurring character on the popular Norwegian TV series Asylet. She was also a regular on Hotel Caesar, Norway’s longest running soap opera.

She came to the U.S. when she was in her early 20s, determined to establish herself in the American movie industry. Acting was her entry to work and her first appearance in an English language feature film came in 2009’s The Other Woman, starring Natalie Portman. But, her interests and goals extended to working behind the camera, as well. She took every opportunity she could to visit sets, network and shoot her own footage. From 2005 to 2013. Fastwold was married to Norwegian musician/actor Sondre Lerche, and she collaborated with him on several projects, too, including music videos.

Filmmaking is about collaboration and collaboration is a Fastwold forte.

THE CORBET CONNECTION

Fastwold’s first writing collaboration with Corbet resulted in the script for The Sleepwalker (2014), an intense psychological thriller which premiered at Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. With The Sleepwalker, as with The Brutalist, the Fastwold and Corbet collaboration extended beyond their writing together. Both played major roles in the film’s production, she as the director of The Sleepwalker, and Corbet as one of its stars. The script, which centers on the relationship between two sisters and the reveal of their family secrets, is characteristic of the duo’s thematic concerns, as also expressed in The Brutalist.

The Sleepwalker was Fastwold’s directorial debut feature. Her second feature, The World to Come, was a for hire assignment. Corbet is credited as an associate producer, but the project, which received rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival in 2020, was in Fastwold’s hands, and it certainly proved her independent directorial mettle. However, Corbet helmed their next co-authored script, The Childhood of a Leader (2015), and the one that followed Vox Lux (2018), for which they were pre-Brutalist best known.

SUPER SUCCESS WITH THE BRUTALIST

Both Fastwold and Corbet, who often appear together in interviews, have described their collaborative process as an intense and soul-searching exploration of style and meaning, but Fastwold has referred to working on The Brutalist, in particular, as something akin to an exorcism. The deeply philosophical film’s theme centers around the discord between an architect and an investor over the tug of authority of aesthetics vs. money — and who has the right to decide the creative direction of a monumental project. “That tug of war is really one of the main themes we are exploring in the film,” Fastvold has said.

The Brutalist is an epic film that took seven years to make. Fastvold has said that she and Corbet drew from their own experiences in life and in filmmaking when writing the script, which centers on László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish visionary architect. After surviving the Holocaust, Tóth emigrates to the U.S. to begin a new life while awaiting the arrival of his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), who is trapped in Eastern Europe with their niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy).

The Brutalist is a three and a half hour emotional and intellectual foray into Tóth’s evolving world and state of mind. Fastwold has said that her experiences with emigrating and expressing herself in a second language have given her insight to the character of László Tóth. “I came here when I was young,” she’s said. “I always wanted to explore the world and I spoke English from a young age. But, there’s a disadvantage to always operating in your second language. I could identify with both Laszlo and Erzsébet, two intellectuals that were treated almost like children, and their misuse of words, and those little things and the humiliation of that for these intellectual characters. It’s easy for me to think of those grammatical mistakes that one makes when you’re sort of translating from another language in your mind.”

She also says that the husband-wife — artist to artist — relationship between Laszlo and Erzsébet is of particular importance to her. “It is a challenging relationship. We, as filmmakers, have experienced this conflict in various degrees, and it was the seed of this idea that we explored. This is something we see a lot and experienced a lot on other projects. Filmmakers and artists are frequently exploited. They are doing jobs to pay the bills, willing to sacrifice almost anything to be able to do their art. It was important to show this in the husband and wife relationship in The Brutalist. We see his obsession and how supportive she is of his work. Often there’s a cliche of the wife or partner who is so angry and upset that someone’s prioritizing their art or their passion over their relationship. This relationship can also be between the investor and the artist, and it can be very complicated,” she’s said.

For the audience, The Brutalist is a fascinating, but challenging watch. And audiences have expressed their approval by giving the film a total gross income $36,628,412 worldwide (with $15,152,412 coming from U.S. domestic markets), more than tripling its initial budget of an estimated 10,000,000. Fastwold has said she’s gratified that the film’s themes and characters resonate with audiences because they are particularly timely.

AWARD SEASON IMPACT

Focus on The Brutalist as an awards contender has given Fastwold the opportunity to speak out about not only the film’s timely theme and its unique aesthetics, but also about her experiences as a female filmmaker in Hollywood. “Progress in moving toward equal opportunity and recognition is slow. It’s 2025, and equal opportunity, equal pay, equal recognition should no longer be issues. But they are big issues, and it is frustrating. I can hope that the success of The Brutalist‘s will help me, but I don’t count on it. And, I am just one woman filmmaker.” she’s said. “Women have to support each other. We have to hire experienced women and mentor younger women. We can’t wait for anyone to give us opportunity. We have to go out there an make our own. That’s what I did at the start. When I came here, I just took my camera with me and began shooting.”

WHY WE CHOSE HER

2025 not only elevates Fastwold into Hollywood’s Oscar pantheon, this year will see the release of a new feature, a femme-centric truth-based musical biopic about Ann Lee, the leading founder of the Shaker movement, who was proclaimed the female Christ by her followers. Again, Fastwold and Corbet collaborated on the script, but this time she is directing and he is credited as a producer. Amanda Seyfried stars in the titular role, and the ensemble includes Christopher Abbott and Tim Blake Nelson. Working in an equal and ongoing filmmaking partnership with Brady Corbet, Mona Fastwold is utilizing the full repertoire of her talents and skills to take full command of her career. The AWFJ March 2025 SPOTLIGHT is on Mona, and we look forward to experiencing more of the Fastvold cinematic universe! — Christina Jeurling-Birro with Jennifer Merin