Sara Driver

Sara Miller Driver (born December 15, 1955) in Westfield, New Jersey is an American independent filmmaker and actress who emerged from the vibrant downtown New York avant‑garde scene of the late 1970s. She first gained industry attention as the producer of Jim Jarmusch’s early cult classics Permanent Vacation (1980) and Stranger Than Paradise (1984), establishing herself as a reliable collaborator in the low‑budget, high‑creativity world of Manhattan’s indie cinema. Driver’s directorial debut arrived in 1981 with the short film You Are Not I, adapted from a Paul Bowles story; shot in six days for a budget of $12,000, the work served as her MFA thesis at NYU and later achieved legendary status after a lost‑and‑found restoration earned a place in the New York Film Festival’s Master Works program in 2011. Her first feature, Sleepwalk (1986), earned the Prix Georges Sadoul from the Cinémathèque Française, a special prize at Mannheim‑Heidelberg, and an opening‑night slot at Cannes’ International Critics’ Week, confirming her reputation for atmospheric storytelling that blends surrealism with gritty urban realism. In 1993 she followed with When Pigs Fly, starring Marianne Faithfull and Alfred Molina, scored by Joe Strummer and recognized with the Best‑of‑Festival Feature award at the Long Island Film Festival. Beyond narrative cinema, Driver directed the documentary Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean‑Michel Basquiat (2017), a meticulously compiled archive that holds an 88 % Rotten Tomatoes rating, and contributed the award‑winning short Stranger Than Rotterdam (2021) to Sundance’s 2022 lineup. A frequent juror at international festivals—including Buenos Aires, Miami, San Sebastián, and the Kustendorf Festival—she has also taught directing at NYU’s Graduate Film School, sharing her expertise with a new generation of creators. Critics such as Lucy Sante and Jonathan Rosenbaum have praised Driver as an overlooked linchpin of downtown New York film, noting that her work opens “doorways into the unknown” and belongs to the French notion of le fantastique, a hybrid of fantasy, horror, and avant‑garde experimentation. Her moving‑image archive is preserved at the Academy Film Archive, ensuring that her distinctive visual voice will continue to influence scholars and filmmakers alike.