Wollen began his career in film production as co-writer of Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Passenger" (1975) and then co-directed a series of experimental features, produced under the aegis of the British Film Institute, with wife and fellow theorist Laura Mulvey (the two are now separated). Wollen made his solo directing debut with the cerebral science fiction feature, "Friendship's Death" (1987), about a female alien (Tilda Swinton) who crash-lands in strife-torn Jordan during "Black September" and strikes up a relationship with a male journalist (Bill Paterson).