Alexander Medawar Garland (born 26 May 1970) is an English writer and filmmaker. He rose to prominence as a novelist in the late 1990s with his novel The Beach, which led some critics to call Garland a key voice of Generation X. He subsequently received praise for the screenplays of the films 28 Days Later (2002), Sunshine (2007), both directed by Danny Boyle, Never Let Me Go (2010), and Dredd (2012). He co-wrote the video game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010) and was a story supervisor on DmC: Devil May Cry (2013).
In 2014, Garland made his directorial debut with Ex Machina, a science fiction-thriller that explores the emergence of artificial general intelligence. The film earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and won three British Independent Film awards for Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best British Independent Film. His second film, Annihilation (2018), based on the 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, was also a critical success. In 2020, he wrote and directed the miniseries Devs for FX on Hulu. Men, his latest film, produced in collaboration with A24, was released in May 2022 and received generally favorable reviews.
Garland was born in London, England, the son of psychologist Caroline (née Medawar) and political cartoonist Nicholas Garland. He has a younger brother and two older paternal half-siblings. His maternal grandparents are Nobel Prize–winning British biologist Peter Medawar and writer Jean Medawar.

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