[7] Soderbergh submitted Sex, Lies, and Videotape to the 1989 Cannes Film Festival where, at age 26, he became the youngest solo director to win the Palme d'Or, the top prize.

[16][17] When I say this is the most important motion picture you'll ever attend, my motivation is not financial gain, but a firm belief that the delicate fabric that holds all of us together will be ripped apart unless every man, woman, and child in this country sees this film and pays full ticket price, not some bargain matinée cut-rate deal.

[22] Based on the memoir of writer A. E. Hotchner, the film is set during the Great Depression and follows a young boy (played by Jesse Bradford) struggling to survive on his own in a hotel in St. Louis after his mother falls ill and his father is away on business trips.

[23] Also in 1995, he directed a remake of Robert Siodmak's 1949 film noir Criss Cross, titled The Underneath, which grossed $536,020 on a $6.5 million budget and was widely panned by critics.

[30] Soderbergh's reemergence began in 1998 with Out of Sight, a stylized adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, written by Scott Frank and starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

[33] He ventured into his first biographical film in 2000 when he directed Erin Brockovich, written by Susannah Grant and starring Julia Roberts in her Oscar-winning role as a single mother taking on industry in a civil action.

[41] A year later, he was asked by executives at Warner Bros Studios to direct the psychological thriller Insomnia (2002), starring Academy Award winners Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank.

[52] National Association of Theatre Owners chief executive John Fithian indirectly called the film's release model "the biggest threat to the viability of the cinema industry today.

Benicio del Toro played the Argentine guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara in an epic four-hour double bill which looks first at his role in the Cuban Revolution before moving to his campaign and eventual death in Bolivia.

Whitacre wore a wire for 2+1⁄2 years for the FBI as a high-level executive at a Fortune 500 company, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), in one of the largest price-fixing cases in history.

[62][63] Also in 2009, Soderbergh shot a small improvised film with the cast of the play, The Last Time I Saw Michael Gregg, a comedy about a theatre company staging Chekhov's Three Sisters.

The book, by Michael Lewis, tells of how Billy Beane, general manager of Oakland Athletics, used statistical analysis to make up for what he lacked in funds to beat the odds and lead his team to a series of notable wins in 2002.

[65] With a cast including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard and Jude Law, the film follows the outbreak of a lethal pandemic across the globe and the efforts of doctors and scientists to discover the cause and develop a cure.

[73] For his then-final feature film, he directed the psychological thriller Side Effects, which starred Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

[74] Screened at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival, A. O. Scott of The New York Times stated that Soderbergh "[handled] it brilliantly, serving notice once again that he is a crackerjack genre technician.

[76] Around that time, he gave a much publicized speech at the San Francisco International Film Festival, detailing the obstacles facing filmmakers in the current corporate Hollywood environment.

[93][94] In February 2016, Soderbergh officially came out of his retirement to direct a NASCAR heist film, Logan Lucky, starring Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and Daniel Craig, among others.

[99][100] The film was released on March 23, 2018[101] and was well received by critics, with Scott Meslow of GQ noting its relevance to the modern plight of women in patriarchal societies, and called it a "nerve-jangling modern-day Kafka story".

[103] In 2018, Soderbergh directed High Flying Bird, starring Andre Holland who played the role of a sports agent representing his rookie client with an intriguing and controversial business opportunity during an NBA lockout.

[106][107][108] Soderbergh's film The Laundromat is a political thriller about the international leak of the Panama Papers, written by Scott Z. Burns and based on the book Secrecy World, by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jake Bernstein.

[109] It stars Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, Matthias Schoenaerts, James Cromwell and Sharon Stone and premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2019[110] before airing on Netflix.

Soderbergh's 2020 film Let Them All Talk, was written by Deborah Eisenberg, and starred Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Gemma Chan, Lucas Hedges and Dianne Wiest.

[113] From Mosaic writer Ed Solomon, it stars Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, David Harbour, Amy Seimetz,[114] Jon Hamm, Ray Liotta, Kieran Culkin, Brendan Fraser, Noah Jupe, Bill Duke, Frankie Shaw and Julia Fox.

[117] It stars Zoë Kravitz as an agoraphobic tech worker who discovers evidence of a violent crime, and reunites Soderbergh with Traffic actors Erika Christensen and Jacob Vargas.

It was written by Ed Solomon, who also wrote Mosaic, and follows "an investigation into a botched kidnapping" that "uncovers long-held secrets connecting multiple characters and cultures in present-day New York City".

[125] Soderbergh filmed the upcoming spy thriller Black Bag, written by Kimi and Presence screenwriter David Koepp and starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender,[126] from May to June 2024 in London.

[140] His frequent collaborations with composers Cliff Martinez, David Holmes, and most recently Thomas Newman, provide his films with "the thematic and sonic landscapes into which he inserts his characters.

Other actors who have appeared in numerous Soderbergh films include Luis Guzmán, Jude Law, Ann Dowd, Joe Chrest,[167] Benicio Del Toro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas and Albert Finney.

In 2009, Soderbergh appeared before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and "cited the French initiative in asking lawmakers to deputize the American film industry to pursue copyright pirates," indicating he supports anti-piracy laws and Internet regulation.

[36] For his work of Erin Brockovich and Traffic, Soderbergh became one of the five directors (alongside Quentin Tarantino, Curtis Hanson, David Fincher, and Barry Jenkins) to ever sweep "The Big Four" critics awards (LAFCA, NBR, NYFCC, NSFC).