Ben Rivers
Ben Rivers was born in Somerset, UK in 1972 and lives and works in London. Rivers’ films are typically intimate portrayals of solitary beings or isolated communities; his practice as a filmmaker treads a line between documentary and fiction. Rivers uses these themes as a starting point from which to imagine alternative narratives and existences in marginal worlds.
In 2025 his film Mare’s Nest won the Pardo Verde at the Locarno Film Festival. In 2013 he was awarded the Artangel Open Commission with the resulting film, The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, presented at The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester in 2016. Ben Rivers’ first feature-length film, Two Years at Sea, was presented in September 2011 at the 68th Venice International Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize.
Photo by Lisa Whiting
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The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers
Directed by Ben Rivers • Drama • 2015 • 95 minutes
Please note not all of the dialogue is translated in this film, nor does it have English closed captions.
The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes are Not Brothers is a labyrinthine and epic film that moves between documentary,...
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A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
Directed by Ben Rivers & Ben Russell • Drama • With Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe • 2014 • 98 minutes
A SPELL follows an unnamed character through three seemingly disparate moments in his life. With little explanation, we join him in the midst of a 15-person collective on a small Estonian island; in i...
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What Means Something
Directed by Ben Rivers • Documentary • With Rose Wylie • 2015 • 66 minutes
A portrait of the painter Rose Wylie. I met Rose quite a few years ago and we became good friends. I asked her if I could make a film about her and she agreed. The film, finally, is a meeting between two friends, made spo...
