Boundlessly creative, always at the forefront of new shooting technologies and a vital visual collaborator to some of the most important directors of our time, the half-Scottish, U.K. born director of photography Anthony Dod Mantle is entering the third decade of his professional career by continuing to expand the expressive visual possibilities of film. The winner of the Academy Award for his loose-limbed depiction of the streets of Mumbai in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, Dod Mantle began his career in London as a stills photographer but took a turn towards cinema when he moved to Denmark in 1979. “Got involved with Denmark via a woman, of course,” he told Shari Roman in an interview for her book Digital Babylon. “After the relationship fell apart, I thought, ‘Why the hell have I been learning this language? There had to be a predestined reason. I refused, because I’m so stubborn, to get on the next plane back, and instead applied for the National Film School.” In his new occupation as d.p., Dod Mantle first came to major notice for his lensing of an uncategorizable and controversial project: German director Philip Groning’s The Terrorists (1992). Depicting in near documentary fashion the preparations of a terrorist cell targeting a leading politician, the movie, wrote Geoffrey Gilmore in the Sundance Film Festival catalog, is “very dynamically structured and shot, [and] the scenario alternates between film and video, setting up a point of view which neither condemns nor condones. The film is never political or ideological, appearing to be less about terrorism, and more about making an impact in a post ideological world.” The film was banned by German chancellor Helmut Kohl and is now a cult favorite.