Screenwriters

Anne Hébert

B: August 1, 1916 in Sainte-Catherine-de-Fossambault, Québec
D: January 22, 2000 in Montréal, Québec

Anne Hébert, Québec’s celebrated author of Kamouraska, Héloise, Les Enfants du sabbat and many other novels and books of poetry, worked as a scriptwriter with the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal in 1953 and 1954. Her co-scripting effort with Claude Jutra led to a somewhat marred film version of Kamouraska, which may have gone too far to preserve the novel’s aleatory approach to memory. Hébert denounced Yves Simoneau’s interpretation of her novel Les Fous de bassan, but some see it as a better film than Jutra’s. She won the Governor General’s Award three times, twice for fiction and once for poetry. Born in Sainte-Catherine-de-Fossambault, that town is now known as Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques Cartier. The last two titles below were based on her written works but she was not the screenwriter. Marcel Beaulieu, Sheldon Chad and Yves Simoneau wrote the screenplay for Les Fous de bassan, 2012’s Le torrent was based on a series of stories Hébert wrote in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They were adapted for the screen by the film’s director, Simon Lavoie. Hébert moved to Paris in the mid-1950s, but returned to Québec shortly before her death. Her last novel Un Habit de lumière was published in 1998. Hébert died of bone cancer on January 22, 2000.