Bruno Dumont (French: [dymɔ̃]; born 14 March 1958) is a French film director and screenwriter. To date, he has directed ten feature films, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde.
Bruno Dumont | |
|---|---|
 Dumont in 2024 | |
| Born | 14 March 1958 |
| Occupations |
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His films have won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Two of Dumont's films have won the Grand Prix award: both L'Humanité (1999)[1] and Flandres (2006).[2]
Life and career
editDumont has a background of Greek and German (Western) philosophy, and of corporate video.[3] His early films show the ugliness of extreme violence and provocative sexual behavior, and are usually classified as art films. Later films bring novel twists to other movie genres like comedy or musicals. Dumont has himself likened his films to visual arts, and he typically uses long takes, close-ups of people's bodies, and story lines involving extreme emotions. Dumont does not write traditional scripts for his films. Instead, he writes complete novels which are then the basis for his filmmaking.
Dumont is known to cast nonprofessional actors in his films. In a 2019 interview for the Criterion Channel, Dumont explained: "If I believed in the ideal, I'd hire a professional actor, and I'd tell them, 'Act like this because this is the truth. Since I don't believe in the ideal, I hire nonprofessional actors...because I believe that anyone is a holder of the truth."[4] He says that some of his favorite filmmakers are Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Rossellini, and Abbas Kiarostami. He is frequently considered an artistic heir to Robert Bresson.
His often polarizing work has been connected to a recent French cinéma du corps/cinema of the body, encompassing contemporary films by Claire Denis, Marina de Van, Gaspar Noé, Diane Bertrand, and François Ozon, among others. According to Tim Palmer, this trajectory includes a focus on states of corporeality in and of themselves, independent of narrative exposition or character psychology.[5] In a more pejorative vein, James Quandt has also talked of some of this group of filmmakers, as the so-called New French Extremity.[6]
His 2011 film Hors Satan premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.[7][8] His 2013 film Camille Claudel 1915 premiered in competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.[9]
Dumont is an atheist.[10]
Filmography
editFeature films
edit| Year | English Title | Original Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | The Life of Jesus | La vie de Jésus | Camera d’Or - Special Mention |
| 1999 | Humanité | Cannes Grand Prix | |
| 2003 | Twentynine Palms | Golden Lion - Nominee | |
| 2006 | Flandres | Flanders | Cannes Grand Prix |
| 2009 | Hadewijch | International Film Critics' prize at TIFF | |
| 2011 | Hors Satan | Un Certain Regard - Nominee | |
| 2014 | Camille Claudel 1915 | Golden Bear - Nominee | |
| 2016 | Slack Bay | Ma Loute | Palme d'Or - Nominee |
| 2017 | Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc | Jeannette, l’enfance de Jeanne d’Arc | |
| 2018 | Coincoin and the Extra-Humans | Coincoin et les z'inhumains | |
| 2019 | Joan of Arc | Jeanne | Special Mention - Un Certain Regard[11] |
| 2021 | France | ||
| 2024 | The Empire | L'Empire | Silver Bear Jury Prize |
Short films
edit- Paris (1993)
- P'tit Quinquin / Li'l Quinquin (1993)
- Marie et Freddy / Marie and Freddy (1994)
References
edit- ^ "Festival de Cannes: Humanité". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 6 October 2009.(1999)
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: Flanders". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 13 December 2009.
- ^ "MoC - the Polarizing, Magnificent Cinema of Bruno Dumont". Archived from the original on 3 October 2006. Retrieved 3 October 2006.
- ^ Clubb, Issa (2019). "Bruno Dumont on Humanité". Criterion Channel.
- ^ Palmer, Tim (2011). Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema, Wesleyan University Press, Middleton CT. ISBN 0-8195-6827-9.
- ^ Quandt, James, "Flesh & Blood: Sex and violence in recent French cinema", ArtForum, February 2004 [1] Access date: 10 July 2008.
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: Official Selection". Cannes. Archived from the original on 15 May 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
- ^ "Cannes film festival 2011: The full lineup". guardian.co.uk. London. 14 April 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
- ^ "Berlinale Competition 2013: Another Nine Films Confirmed". berlinale. Archived from the original on 10 April 2013. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
- ^ "French Director Bruno Dumont on Outside Satan: "No God but Cinema"". huffingtonpost.com. 21 November 2011. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
- ^ Bradshaw, Peter (18 May 2019). "Joan of Arc review – child warrior on the march in an absurdist pageant". The Guardian.
Dumont started with the shocking, visionary realism of movies such as The Life of Jesus (1997), Humanity (1999) and Outside Satan (2011). Then he moved boldly and very successfully into broad comedy with his TV miniseries Li'l Quinquin (2014) and the period diversion Slack Bay (2016), amplifying the bat-squeak of humour that was probably there all along.