Denis Villeneuve

The film went on to win eight awards at the 31st Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Direction, Best Actress (Lubna Azabal), Best Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Overall Sound, and Sound Editing.

Incendies was chosen by The New York Times as one of the top 10 best films of that year.

Denis Villeneuve (born October 3, 1967) is a French-Canadian filmmaker.

Villeneuve was born on October 3, 1967, in the village of Gentilly in Bécancour, Quebec, to Nicole Demers, a homemaker, and Jean Villeneuve, a notary.

He is the eldest of four siblings.

His younger brother, Martin, also became a filmmaker.

Villeneuve attended the Séminaire Saint-Joseph de Trois-Rivières and later studied science at the Cégep de Trois-Rivières.

He studied cinema at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

The film was selected as the Canadian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 71st Academy Awards, but was not nominated.

Incendies was subsequently chosen to represent Canada at the 83rd Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language Film and was eventually nominated for the award, though it did not win.

Villeneuve began his career making short films and won Radio-Canada's youth film competition, La Course Europe-Asie, in 1991.

Villeneuve cites Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, the Coen brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ridley Scott, Jean-Luc Godard, and Steven Spielberg as his main cinematic influences.

It earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture, with the film itself winning a leading six Oscars at the 94th Academy Awards.

In total, Villeneuve's films have grossed over $1.1 billion worldwide.

His latest film, Dune: Part Two (2024), was released on March 1, 2024, by Warner Bros. Pictures.

August 32nd on Earth (1998), Villeneuve's feature film directorial debut, premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

Alexis Martin won the Prix Jutra for Best Actor.

His second film, Maelström (2000), attracted further attention and screened at festivals worldwide, ultimately winning eight Jutra Awards and the award for Best Canadian Film from the Toronto International Film Festival.

He is a four-time recipient of the Canadian Screen Award (formerly Genie Award) for Best Direction, winning for Maelström in 2001, Polytechnique in 2009, Incendies in 2010 and Enemy in 2013.

The first three of these films also won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture, while the latter was awarded the prize for best Canadian film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association.

He followed that up with the controversial, but critically acclaimed black and white film Polytechnique (2009) about the shootings that occurred at the University of Montreal in 1989.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and received numerous honours, including nine Genie Awards, becoming Villeneuve's first film to win the Genie (now known as a Canadian Screen Award) for Best Motion Picture.

Villeneuve's fourth film Incendies (2010) garnered critical acclaim when it premiered at the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals in 2010.

In January 2011, he was selected by Variety as one of the top ten filmmakers to watch.

Also in 2011, Villeneuve won the National Arts Centre Award.

Internationally, he is known for directing several critically acclaimed films, including the thrillers Prisoners (2013) and Sicario (2015), as well as the science fiction films Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017).

For his work on Arrival, he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

Villeneuve followed Incendies with the crime thriller film Prisoners (2013), starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal.

The film screened at festivals across the globe, won several awards, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 2014.

Following Incendies and Prisoners, Villeneuve won Best Director for his sixth film, the psychological thriller Enemy (2014), at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards.

The film was awarded the $100,000 cash prize for best Canadian film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association in 2015.

Later that year, Villeneuve directed the crime thriller film Sicario, scripted by Taylor Sheridan, and starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Daniel Kaluuya, and Josh Brolin.

The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, though it did not win.

It screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 and went on to gross nearly $80 million worldwide.

Principal photography began on June 7, 2015, in Montreal, and the film was released in 2016.

Arrival grossed $203 million worldwide and received critical acclaim, specifically for Adams's performance, Villeneuve's direction, and the film's exploration of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Arrival appeared on numerous critics' best films of the year lists, and was selected by the American Film Institute as one of ten films of the year.

Villeneuve subsequently directed his eighth film, Arrival (2016), based on the short story Story of Your Life by author Ted Chiang, from an adapted script by Eric Heisserer, with Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner starring.

He was awarded the prize of Director of the Decade by the Hollywood Critics Association in December 2019.

His film Dune (2021), based on Frank Herbert's novel of the same name, premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival; the film received critical acclaim, was a commercial success at the box office internationally, and is his highest-grossing film to date.