Gareth Evans

Gareth Huw Evans (born 1979 or 1980) is a Welsh film director, screenwriter, editor, and action choreographer. He is best known for the Indonesian action crime films Merantau (2009), The Raid (2011), and The Raid 2 (2014), and for bringing the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat into world cinema through these films. He is also known for co-creating, co-writing, co-directing, and executive producing the Sky Atlantic/AMC action crime drama television series Gangs of London (2020–present) alongside Matt Flannery, based on the 2006 video game of the same name. Evans was born and raised in Hirwaun, Cynon Valley. He graduated from the University of Glamorgan (now the University of South Wales) with an MA in screenwriting. After directing a small-budget film called Footsteps, Evans was hired as a freelance director for a documentary about the Indonesian martial art pencak silat. He became fascinated with it and discovered Indonesian martial artist Iko Uwais, who was working as a deliveryman for a phone company. Evans cast Uwais in his 2009 film Merantau. He planned to produce a large action film but scaled the production budget down and created an action film called The Raid (2011). After the success of The Raid, the larger action film eventually became the basis for its sequel, The Raid 2: Berandal (2014). In late 2016, Evans started working on his next film, Apostle, which stars Dan Stevens. Netflix released the film on 12 October 2018. In October 2017, TheWrap reported that Evans had pitched his idea for a Deathstroke solo film and is in early talks to write and direct. Evans also passed on directing a Justice League Dark film. However, in April 2020, Evans said that the film had been delayed and that he was no longer actively involved with the project. Evans lived in Jakarta with his wife, Maya, and their daughter until the family moved back to Wales in 2015. Description above from the Wikipedia article Gareth Evans (filmmaker), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Works

Baal

Grace returns to the small town she grew up in to find the brother, David, is missing. Deciding that she must reunite her family, she follows a lead which takes her deep into the wilderness. Lost, injured and alone, soon her only hope is another hiker who is communicating with her via her radio. Grace makes her way closer to this mysterious hiker – however, suspicions start to grow about their true identity. As the darkness grows ever more menacing and a threatening presence begins to consume Grace, who can she really trust?

Release Date:2024-10-01

Department:Sound

Job:Production Sound Mixer

The Art of Action

International action star Scott Adkins talks with some of the world's most renowned names in the action and martial arts film industry to discover what it takes to make good action movies and how to film fights.

Release Date:2020-06-28

Character:Self

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:5

Gangs of London

When the head of a criminal organisation, Finn Wallace is assassinated, the sudden power vacuum his death creates threatens the fragile peace between the intricate web of gangs operating on the streets of the city. Now it’s up to the grieving, volatile and impulsive Sean Wallace to restore control and find those responsible for killing his father.

Release Date:2020-04-23

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:5

Vote Count:560

Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks

The fantastic story of how an ancient martial art, Chinese kung fu, conquered the world through the hundreds of films that were produced in Hong Kong over the decades, transformed Western action cinema and inspired the birth of cultural movements such as blaxploitation, hip hop music, parkour and Wakaliwood cinema.

Release Date:2019-08-14

Character:Self (archive footage)

Vote Count:52

Apostle

In 1905, a man travels to a remote island in search of his missing sister who has been kidnapped by a mysterious religious cult.

Release Date:2018-09-21

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:1443

Pre Vis Action

In a time of civil war, a young warrior is given the task of delivering a treaty between two rival lords. During her journey through the woods however, she finds herself hunted by two assassins intent on intercepting her message of peace in a bid to maintain the fear, instability and violent rule of their leader.

Release Date:2016-01-25

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:25

The Raid 2

After fighting his way through an apartment building populated by an army of dangerous criminals and escaping with his life, SWAT team member Rama goes undercover, joining a powerful Indonesian crime syndicate to protect his family and uncover corrupt members of his own force.

Release Date:2014-03-27

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:2370

V/H/S/2

Inside a darkened house looms a column of TVs littered with VHS tapes, a pagan shrine to forgotten analog gods. The screens crackle and pop endlessly with monochrome vistas of static white noise permeating the brain and fogging concentration. But you must fight the urge to relax: this is no mere movie night. Those obsolete spools contain more than just magnetic tape. They are imprinted with the very soul of evil.

Release Date:2013-06-06

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:1068

The Raid

Deep in the heart of Jakarta's slums lies an impenetrable safe house for the world's most dangerous killers and gangsters. Until now, the run-down apartment block has been considered untouchable to even the bravest of police. Cloaked under the cover of pre-dawn darkness and silence, an elite swat team is tasked with raiding the safe house in order to take down the notorious drug lord that runs it. But when a chance encounter with a spotter blows their cover and news of their assault reaches the drug lord, the building's lights are cut and all the exits blocked. Stranded on the sixth floor with no way out, the unit must fight their way through the city's worst to survive their mission. Starring Indonesian martial arts sensation Iko Uwais.

Release Date:2012-03-22

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:3501

Merantau

In Minangkabau, West Sumatera, Yuda a skilled practitioner of Silat Harimau is in the final preparations to begin his "Merantau" a century's old rites-of-passage to be carried out by the community's young men that will see him leave the comforts of his idyllic farming village and make a name for himself in the bustling city of Jakarta.

Release Date:2009-08-06

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:217

Footsteps

A young man called Andrew is forced to endure a bitter encounter with a man known as the Cameraman, who enjoys filming beatings, murders and rapes in an abandoned underpass.

Release Date:2006-06-08

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:11

Blister

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Havoc

After a drug deal gone wrong, a bruised detective must fight his way through a criminal underworld to rescue a politician’s estranged son, while unraveling a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city.

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Samurai Monogatari

A forest, Japan. A man stops, sits and waits. Behind him, at dawn, the sun streams through the trees and, as he waits for his last day on earth, he contemplates. He thinks about what he has done to draw him here. As he waits, a traveller approaches him and asks what he's doing. And so the wanderer explains that he was once a samurai who killed without thought, who enjoyed taking revenge for the torture of his family, who was filled with hate. But after he begged his master for release, because he was sick of killing, and he was refused and had to kill his master, he had a change of attitude - not least because he created an eight-year-old orphan, who he felt duty-bound to provide for. Now, ten years on from the slaying, his attitude is that of circular fate, that he will now get what he has deserved for many years.

Release Date:2003-12-31

Department:Directing

Job:Director