Mulholland Drive (film)

Mulholland Drive^[b] is a 2001 surrealist neo-noir mystery art film written and directed by David Lynch; his tagline for the film is "a love story in the city of dreams". In the beginning, an aspiring actress (Naomi Watts) arrives in Los Angeles, where she befriends a woman (Laura Harring) who is suffering from amnesia after a car crash. The plot abruptly shifts later, with the actors taking on modified roles. The film follows several other vignettes and characters, including a Hollywood director (Justin Theroux) who must deal with mob interference while casting for his latest film.

The film was originally conceived as a television pilot for ABC, with footage shot and edited in 1999 as an open-ended mystery. After viewing Lynch's cut, however, television executives cancelled the proposed television series. Lynch then secured funding from French production company StudioCanal to make the material into a feature film, writing an ending to the project and filming new material. The resulting surrealist narrative has left the film's events open to interpretation. Lynch declined to offer an explanation, leaving audiences, critics, and even the film's own cast to speculate on its meaning.

Mulholland Drive earned Lynch the 2001 Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director for the film. The film boosted Watts' Hollywood profile considerably, and was the last feature film to star veteran Hollywood actress Ann Miller.

The film has received enduring critical acclaim and has been listed as one of the greatest films of all time. The 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time critics' poll ranked it at No. 8. The BBC and IndieWire ranked it the best film of the 21st century, and the LA Film Critics Association ranked it the best film of the 2000s. In 2025, the New York Times ranked it at number 2 in their list of The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century, while media outlet The Ringer ranked Naomi Watts’ performance as the greatest of the 21st century.

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