Macdonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His maternal grandparents were the Hungarian-born British filmmaker Emeric Pressburger and English screenwriter and actress Wendy Orme. He was brought up on a sheep farm in Gartocharn, Dunbartonshire. He was educated at Glenalmond College, and St Anne's College, Oxford. His brother Andrew is a film producer. In 1999, he married Tatiana Lund, with whom he has three sons. He lives in North London.
Career
Macdonald began his career with a biography of his grandfather, The Life and Death of a Screenwriter, which he turned into the documentary The Making of an Englishman. After making a series of biographical documentaries, Macdonald directed One Day in September, about the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Possibly the most striking feature of this film was the lengthy interview with Jamal Al-Gashey, the last known survivor of the Munich terrorists. Macdonald found Al-Gashey through intermediaries, and was able to convince him that the film would only be truly authentic if Al-Gashey gave his side of the story. Since the former terrorist was convinced that Israeli authorities were still hunting him, Al-Gashey agreed to the interview only on condition that he would be disguised, his face would be shown only in shadow or blurred out, and that the interview would be conducted by a person and in a place of Al-Gashey's choosing, although Al-Gashey agreed that Macdonald could be present. Since the interview was conducted entirely in Arabic, and Al-Gashey frequently stormed out of the interview room, Macdonald did not know if he had anything usable until he returned to London and hired an Arabic translator. The film won an Oscar for Best Documentary. His next film was Touching the Void, which told the story of two climbers' disastrous attempt to scale the Siula Grande in the Andes in 1985. The film won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2003–04 BAFTA Awards – coincidentally, it was Korda who had given Macdonald's grandfather his first job when he had arrived in Britain in 1935. Next was The Last King of Scotland, which won an Oscar for best actor. He has also directed a number of television commercials with Rogue Films who represent him for all his TV commercial work worldwide. Macdonald directed the film adaptation of hit BBC television dramaState of Play, starring Russell Crowe. He then directed The Eagle, an adaptation of the book The Eagle of the Ninth, about a Roman Legion in 2nd century A.D. in Scotland. Bobby Fischer Goes to War, his next project, is a film about the 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavík, Iceland, in which Bobby Fischer took on the entire Soviet chess establishment. Macdonald made the film Life in a Day with producer Ridley Scott. The footage was filmed by thousands of people all around the world about their life in one day and posted on YouTube. The film premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival to a global live audience, on 27 January 2011. Macdonald worked with the film production team Altitude, who created the commercially and critically acclaimed Amy Winehouse documentary film Amy, on a Whitney, a 2018 documentary based on Whitney Houston's life and death. This was the first Whitney Houston documentary to be officially authorized by the estate, and includes never-before-seen footage of Houston, exclusive demo recordings, rare performances and interviews with luminaries like Clive Davis. Macdonald stated, "The story that is never told about Whitney is just how brilliant she was as an artist; by many measures she had the greatest voice of the last 50 years. She changed the way pop music was sung - bringing it back full circle to its blues and gospel roots. She was also completely unique in being a black pop star who transcended her race globally with her work sold in countries where black artists don't sell."
Filmography
As director:
The Making of an Englishman, about the filmmaker Emeric Pressburger
