B: October 3, 1967 in Gentilly, Québec
Long before Denis Villenueve made his first feature film, he had everyone’s attention. For example, in 1990-1991 the Québec version of CBC, Radio-Canada, held something called the Europe-Asia Race. The young Villeneuve directed 20 short videos and won first place for his work. Working in music videos, he directed Daniel Bélanger’s Ensorcelée, which was given the Félix Award for Best Video of the Year in 1994. He shot Querer for Cirque du Soleil, which took three awards including Most Visually Innovative Canadian Video at the 1995 Much Music Awards. He directed commercials, shot a concert documentary on Richard Séguin, co-directed the feature Cosmo, which was selected for the Director’s Fortnight at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival winning the Prix International des Cinémas a’Art et d’Essai. His first feature, which he wrote and directed, Un 32 août sur terre (aka August 32nd on Earth) was released in 1998 and many other films followed. His film Polytechnique won the Genie Award for Best Picture and he won for Best Director in 2010. One year later, at the 2011 Genie Awards, Incendies took Best Picture and Best Director awards along with six other Genie Awards. Also that year, he was one of three Canadians (along with Ed Gass-Donnelly and Patrick Lussier) named in Variety Magazine’s “10 Directors to Watch” list published in January of 2011. At the 2014 Canadian Screen Awards he was honoured as Best Director for his 2013 film, Enemy. In early January 2015, Enemy was also given the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award by the Toronto Film Critics Association. The award comes with a $100,000 prize and it was the third time Villeneuve had been honoured with the award, having previously won in consecutive years for 2009’s Polytechnique and 2010’s Incendies. In January of 2017 he was nominated for an Academy Award® as Best Director for the film Arrival, which was also nominated as Best Picture. His remake of Blade Runner and tackling a remake of Dune were still in the future. Also see: TIFF Honours Two |
Features & TV Movies: Cosmos (segment: “Le technètium” 1996) Maelström (2000) Etude empirique sur l’influence du son sur la pertinence rétinienne (2011, short) Dune (2020) |
|
