Writer: Steven Zaillian

Steven Zaillian won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Schindler’s List and has specialised in turning dense non-fiction into workable drama: Awakenings, American Gangster, Moneyball and The Irishman.

His method is to resist the tidy version. Moneyball keeps the statistical argument technical, American Gangster refuses to make either lead sympathetic, and Schindler’s List declines to explain why Schindler changed.

He created The Night Of for television, which applies the same patience to a legal procedure over eight hours, and directed A Civil Action and All the King’s Men.