Search results for: Denis Villeneuve

Unlike last year's two filmmaker/film horse race between Denis Villeneuve's Polytechnique and Xavier Dolan's J'ai tué ma mere, this year it was all "Villeneuve" and "Incendies". Repeating his wins in all the same categories it won at the Canadian Oscars (Genies) this week (this includes Editing, Screenplay, Best Cinematography by the excellent André Turpin, Best Actress in Lubna Azabal (who forced here co-star Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin to give her own thank you speech).

While Denis Villeneuve's Incendies lost out in its Best Foreign Picture bid, but in what constitutes a nice consolation prize, the film picked up a total of eight awards, including Best Motion Picture, Achievement in Direction, Adapted Screenplay (both going to Villeneuve), and Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role which goes to versatile thesp Lubna Azabal at the Canadian Oscars otherwise known as The Genie Awards.

Backtrack in Denis Villeneuve's body of work and you'll notice two things: the lead always goes to an actress, and the role is usually a career changer for the thesp. If you're a French Canadian you might know Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin from a couple of local feature film projects, and if you saw Incendies in Venice, Telluride or TIFF you'll have seen her take on the role of an adult daughter putting closer to one hell of a family secret.

I'm not sure what the cutoff date is for from the individual countries for the Foreign Language Film nominations, but Sony Pictures Classics are glad to see Canada select Denis Villeneuve's Incendies. The company now has three horses in the race and once again, places the distributor in a pretty good position to grab the most of the spots in the final five nominations.

Long-time cinematographer Pierre Gill (he was on the money with Denis Villeneuve's Polytechnique) will be making his feature film debut directing Adrien Brody, veteran actress Isabelle Adjani, and Twilight alumni Rachelle Lefevre in VK - all the actors are of course attached at this point.