Darren Aronofsky secured a reputation as a brash, intelligent filmmaker at the age of 29, with Pi, his 1998 feature directorial and screenwriting debut. A dizzying black and white odyssey, it tells the story of a brilliant mathematician (Sean Gullette) driven by his conviction that higher mathematics can be used to unlock the secrets of the natural world. Claiming such disparate influences as Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, the visual and editing style of Japan's Shinya Tsukamoto (Tokyo Fist, Tetsuo), Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Rod Serling, Philip K. Dick, the chaos theory, and the Jewish Kabbalah, Pi garnered Aronofsky the 1998 Sundance Festival's Directing Award for Dramatic Competition.

A self-described "Brooklyn hip-hop kid," Aronofsky was born in the borough on February 12, 1969. His upbringing was marked by his Jewish heritage (although in an interview he once disparagingly referred to himself as a "classically hypocritical high holiday Jew"), painting graffiti art on subway cars, and filmgoing in Times Square. An alumnus of the New York public school system, he attended Harvard, where he studied live action and animation and met future collaborator and Pi star…  » Read more