Clément Virgo - Northernstars.ca

Clément Virgo
b. June 1, 1966, at Montego Bay, Jamaica

Clément Virgo is an award-winning filmmaker whose credits span directing, writing and producing.

Like many directors, he began making short films and one of them, Save My Lost Nigga' Soul, was named Best Short Film in Toronto and Chicago, and won the prestigious Paul Robeson Award for Best Short Film of the African diaspora at the 1995 Pan African Film and Video Festival. Using the experience he gained making short films while studying at Canadian Film Centre, Virgo started work on what would become his first feature. Rude, released in 1995, which he wrote, produced, and directed showed his considerable talents <Clément Virgo>

and has played at festivals around the world. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995 and opened the Perspective Canada program at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won a Jury Citation for Best Feature Film. It was also selected for the Sundance Film Festival, nominated for eight Genie Awards, and won Best Canadian Film at the Atlantic Film Festival and Best Ontario Film at Cinefest 1995. Quite a start for this young filmmaker.

From Rude he moved carefully and successfully into episodic television. He picked up a Gemini Award nomination for Best Direction in a Dramatic Series for his episode of the CBC series Side Effects. Virgo's The Planet of Junior Brown, although produced as a made-for-television movie, had its theatrical premier at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on to win Best Feature Film at the Urban World Film Festival, America's foremost black film event, and Best Screenplay at the Monte Carlo International Television Festival. Back in Canada, The Planet of Junior Brown won Virgo and his co-writer, Cameron Bailey, a Gemini nomination.

His film, Love Come Down was honoured with nine Genie nominations from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and won three, including Best Supporting Actor at the awards ceremony in Toronto on January 29, 2001. His third feature, Lie with Me, a sexy summer romance, was released in 2005, and 2007 brought the the release of Poor Boy's Game, a boxing drama filmed in Halifax.

Go to Clément Virgo's Filmography