Roeg

As for his key inspiration for the practical creature in “Ochi,” Saxon recalls being moved by the animatronic mouse in Nicolas Roeg’s gleefully macabre 1990 “The Witches,” which he watched as a kid and describes as a “correct adaptation of Roald Dahl.”

He worked with auteurs including Nicolas Roeg in “Don’t Look Now” and Federico Fellini in “Fellini’s Casanova.”

“Don’t Look Now” led Haigh to other Roeg landmarks, such as “Walkabout” and “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” and to an interest in classic and art-house cinema.

Around the age of 15, Haigh, propelled by word of its notoriously lifelike sex scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, rented Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 horror classic “Don’t Look Now” and began a fascination with onscreen intimacy that would come to define his work.

Thomas had long-running, multi-film relationships with Bertolucci, Nicolas Roeg and David Cronenberg among others, while also producing early works by Stephen Frears, Jonathan Glazer and many more.