Hannah Fidell keeps close to people in difficult relationships, letting silence do some of the work. We value that patience, though it can leave her drama short of the momentum it needs.
Fi1m perspective
Kristen Bell and Adam Brody make the attraction in Nobody Wants This (2024) convincing. We were won over by their chemistry, even while wishing the script asked more of them. Hannah Fidell directed several episodes, but the warmth of the programme cannot sensibly be credited to her alone. It does offer an inviting introduction to a director who pays close attention to how people behave together.
Her first feature, A Teacher (2013), established her interest in psychologically intense relationships. 6 Years (2015) used improvisational elements in a young adult relationship drama, and The Long Dumb Road (2018) took her into feature comedy. These are different sorts of evening, but the attention to people remains. The reservation about the early A Teacher is that its episodes do not build enough dramatic momentum.
The television version of A Teacher (2020), which she created, wrote and directed, gave her more room to examine grooming and its consequences. In Pam & Tommy (2022), her episode focused on Pam Anderson's perspective. Silence and restrained images are central to Fidell's approach, leaving space for an emotional state to become clear without a speech explaining it. Andrew Droz Palermo has been her cinematographer on three films. That visual restraint is useful when the subject is already distressing enough.
Nobody Wants This shows why that attention can work in a lighter programme. Bell and Brody's attraction, backed by a funny supporting cast, is enough to make it an enjoyable romantic comedy. The writing does too little with the religious differences it puts between them. Those differences need to feel capable of keeping the couple apart, and the series is less persuasive about that than it is about their attraction. Start here for the company, with modest expectations of how thoroughly the obstacles to the romance will be examined.
Biography
Hannah Fidell is an American film and television director, writer and producer. She was born on 7 October 1985 in Washington, D.C., and studied film theory at Indiana University Bloomington.
Fidell made her feature directorial debut with A Teacher (2013), which she also wrote and produced. She subsequently wrote and directed the films 6 Years (2015) and The Long Dumb Road (2018). Her television directing credits include episodes of The Act (2019), Pam & Tommy (2022), A Teacher (2020) and Nobody Wants This (2024).
She is married to Jake Longstreth.
